Stats Attack 3

Time again for some statistics, otherwise known as "damn lies." Here are some miscellaneous stats from numeric life:

• 27% of people include pets in their wills.
• The average American has 9.8 passwords/PINs to remember.
• In passwords, the number 1 appears twice as often as any other number.
• 53% of Hip-Hop fans admit to committing a crime, compared with 18% of fans of musicals.
• According to the Wold Wildlife Fund, if everyone lived like an American (or a Canadian) we would need 5 Earths to support us.
• 8% of the U.S. working population commutes more than 1 hour (one way) to go to work.
• Each additional inch in a person's height correlates with a 2% increase in average salary.
• Women with science doctorates are 2 times as likely as men to never have married or to be divorced.
• In the U.S. from 1997--2001, national wage gains captured by the richest 1% was far more than the entire bottom 50% combined.

Children/education:

• Learning from a teacher of opposite gender correlates with lower average grades.
• 997 hours/year = the average time a U.S. child spends in class.
• 1,023 hours/year = the average time a U.S. child spends watching TV.
• 30% of U.S. students don't graduate from high school. (!?? my dad says this is also true in Ontario!)
• 40% of U.S. college freshmen need remedial classes because they are unprepared.
• 70% of public high school students admit to serious test cheating.
• 60% of public high school students admit to plagiarizing at least one essay.
• At 32 graduate business schools in the U.S. and Canada, 56% of business students were willing to own up to cheating.

Beliefs:

• 20% of Americans believe that the living can communicate with the dead.
• 46% of women surveyed believed that "the souls of the dead protect the living as spirit guides," compared with 27% of men.
• According to Bible, God killed 2,038,334+ people, compared to Satan's 10.
• 42% of adult Americans were not "absolutely certain" about the existence of God, up from 34% three years ago.

Health/body image:

• The average American woman weighs 163 lbs (74 kg).
• 56% of women and 43% of men are dissatisfied with their appearance.
• More than 290,000 women in the US had breast implants in 2005, up 37% from 2000.
• Breast implants correlate with a 73% higher rate of suicide.
• Teens who use media with high sexual content are more than 2 times as likely to have sex by the time they are 16 years old. (causation could be the other way around though, I think!)
• 77% of women surveyed would prefer a new plasma TV to a diamond solitaire necklace.
• 86% of women would prefer a new digital video camera to a pair of designer shoes.

The placebo effect is physical, not just psychological. In a recent study:

• By telling Parkinson's patients that they were receiving medicine (a placebo), the problematic neurons quieted down by 40%.
• Morphine is up to 50% more effective when patients know it's coming.