Fun facts about the United States

Daily Caloric requirement of the average inactive 180-pound American: 1,800

Calories in one Burger King Double Whopper: 920


Total American expenditure on fast food in 2000: $110 Billion; more than on higher education; more than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos, and recorded music combined.


Period for which a 27-inch TV could be powered by the calories consumed in an average American's Thanksgiving Day meal: 49 hours


Amount of time the average American parent spends shopping per week: 6 hours

Amount of time the average American parent spends playing with their children per week: 40 minutes


Percentage of the 10 billion plastic Coke bottles distributed in the United States made of recycled material: 0


Decrease in daily oil consumption in the United States if the average fuel efficiency of all SUVs increased by 3 miles per gallon: 49,000,000 gallons


Amount of food suitable for human consumption wasted annually in the United States: 48,000,000 tons


Amount of time the average American child spends watching television, annually: 1,500 hours

Amount of time the average American child spends in school, annually: 900 hours


Percentage of Americans who can name the Three Stooges: 59

Percentage of Americans who can name at least three justices on the U.S. Supreme Court: 17


Percentage of Americans who believe that the theory of human evolution is "probably" or "definitely" not true: 47

Percentage of Americans who believe that astrology "probably" or "definitely" is the scientific truth: 48


Percentage of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 who can find Iraq on a labeled map or globe: 14

Percentage of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 who can find Afghanistan on a labeled map or globe: 17

Percentage of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 who cannot find the United States on a blank world map: 10


Percentage of Americans who can name even one of the five freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment to the Constitution: 34

Percentage of Americans who cannot identify the source of the phrase: "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness": 70


Percentage of Americans who would deny an atheist's right to air his views in a public auditorium: 71


Average percentage of the world believed by Americans to be English speaking: 52

Percentage of the world's population that is English speaking: 20


Number of acts of violence committed in a typical 18-hour broadcast day: 1,846

Average number of murders and attempted murders that an American child will witness by the age of 18 if his or her home has premium cable channels or a VCR/DVD player: 72,000


Percentage of African-Americans annually who are followed around a store by an employee who suspects them of shoplifting: 44


Percentage of SUVs that are ever used off-road: 5


Percentage of teenage girls in America who say shopping is their favorite pastime: 98


Average amount of pocket money for an American child, annually: over $230

Average total annual income of the world's 500 million poorest people: less than $230


Percentage by which the size of an average American two-car garage exceeds that of an average home in Tokyo: 25


Gallons of oil poured down drains or sent to landfills annually in the United States: 180 million

Percentage by which this exceeds the Exxon Valdez oil spill: 1,600


The amount of land the United States blacktops each year is equal to the size of the state of Delaware


Rank of greenhouse gas production by Texas among the world's nations: sixth

Rank of greenhouse gas production by France: seventh


There are more shopping centers in the United States than there are High Schools

[left]We're such a mess, it's not even funny. It's no wonder we're our biggest fans.
[/left]

In Your Face!!! France!!

Ah, but that is just the price we must pay for being the richest nation in the world.

Silly human, brains are for cherubs.

And no other country has unhealthy food, right? Only America?




Everyone eats. Plus, IWTSTDCTOC*, or else it's meaningless.



Certainly no other country has holiday feasts, right? I mean, Christmas and Easter are only celebrated in America, for example, and there are no other holidays outside of ones we celebrate, I'm sure.



Shopping for what? Without that statistic, this data is useless. I can spend that a week in stores buying food quite easily.



IWTSTDCTOC



IWTSTDCTOC



So go increase the efficiency. You don't think "More fuel efficient!" is a huge selling point? If three miles per gallon could be magicaly realized without compromising the design in other ways, I'm sure the car companies would love to talk to you.



IWTSTDCTOC



IWTSTDCTOC



IWTSTDCTOC



The interesting thing about these statistics is that they don't make sense taken together - the people so religious as to discount evolution are not, as a rule, inclined to believe in astrology.



When was this data taken?



See above.



Sorry, I'll believe a lot of things, but I won't believe this one. Period. I know kids our stupid, I know our education system stucks, but I won't believe this statistic. What's your source for that data? Or is this whole list copy-pasted from an e-mail or web-page with no sources cited?



Can you name them all, out of curiosity? Without googling it? Besides, IWTSTDCTOC



Compare to percentage of Americans who know it one of the Big Three documents, please. There are levels of ignorance. Again, IWTSTDCTOC.



Two questions:

Define "air his views". In what context, in to what audience, in what setting?

Cite the source for this data, please.



IWTSTDCTOC.



IWTSTDCTOC. Besides, so?



I've seen variations of that statistic before, and I'm as sceptical now as I was before. I'd like to see a breakdown of how that number was arived at, please, with strict definitions and a list of all assumptions made.



Source of data?

Data compared to actual results? (Ooops, racism!)



Fun fact: SUVs have other uses than off-road driving.



IWTSTDCTOC



Irrelivent for half a dozen reasons.




This is bad how?

Percentage of size by which America's landmass excedes that of Japan? Great jumpin' cats!



IWTSTDCTOC



Source of data including definitions, please. I have a sneaking suspision that this includes re-blacktoping.



Size of France compared to size of Texas, please.



A: Define "shopping center"
B: Ratio of people who shop verses people who go to highschool
C: IWTSTDCTOC

----

*IWTSTDCTOC: I Want To See This Data Compared To Other Countries, in proportion.

was this a recent Harper's index?

Percentage of idiots who would reply to the list one by one attempting to sound clever: 5

Percentage of people who don't have the resources to actually respond to justified criticism, but, darnit, they know know that the list /feels/ right: 95%.

[QUOTE



Fun fact: SUVs have other uses than off-road driving.



IWTSTDCTOC



Irrelivent for half a dozen reasons.




This is bad how?

Percentage of size by which America's landmass excedes that of Japan? Great jumpin' cats!



IWTSTDCTOC



Source of data including definitions, please. I have a sneaking suspision that this includes re-blacktoping.



Size of France compared to size of Texas, please.



A: Define "shopping center"
B: Ratio of people who shop verses people who go to highschool
C: IWTSTDCTOC

----

*IWTSTDCTOC: I Want To See This Data Compared To Other Countries, in proportion.[/QUOTE]



Only you would challange pure facts. But then, Dictator George is changing pure facts to meet his needs every single day and the Republicans are doing their best to get the rest of the nation to obey. One also wonders if IWTSTDCTOC is just a buzz word

The World Wonders

IWTSTDCTOC

Actually, lots of people challenge "pure facts", because we doubt the purity of said facts. Do you think the first time any fact is stated, it becomes the only accepted reading of said data for the rest of time? In this case, without citations, the facts become meaningless because they aren't trustable - in the cases when the facts are not deliberatly presented in such a way as to imply things that are misleading.

No, IWTSTDCTOC is my own little acronym that I devloped to keep from typing the same phrase repeatedly - If you read what it stands for, you will find that the question is of crucial relevence to deriving any useful comparisons out of your so-called "pure facts".

IWTSTDCTOC doesn't work here - the forums aren't a country However, I'm using Cotten's wonderful statistic he provided and providing a possible interperative inverse of it, if you want to know my data.

Oh, by the way - How are those "pure facts" working out for you now, Magnum? Have you found me a copy of "The Judicary Act of 1791" that says "The Supreme Court Has the Power to Make Law"?

Well this one at least has a simple solution. Make all televisions powered by treadmill.

You obviously have no idea how much hillbillies love to tinker Within a week every television owned in any rural area would be powered by a gas lawnmower motor.

haha, good point!

I think it's not as much 'challenging the facts' but the arrangment of facts which tries to convey author's personal opinions which are just that.

E.g.

* number of people participating actively in game forums: 10%
* number of people with IQ far below the norm: 10%

the second one could be equally well replaced with

* number of people with IQ far _above_ the norm: 10%

... which paints entirely different picture for somene who would actually be naive enough to think there's correlation of any sort between presented facts, doesn't it?

(numbers entirely made up to illustrate the principle)

The OP used made up numbers too. I was going to comment right after it was posted, but I ignored it all together when I couldn't verify (or easily disprove) any item. (I only checked 4 or 5 and kept running into more leftest spew on the Internet with each search. Odds are something is accurate. Every landfill has a jewel in it. )

"Paste it and Forget it" = troll

I wasn't able to verify much of what was posted either, although like you, I gave up after the first few turned out to be dead ends.

Doesn't mean I won't respond to it. People ignoring the third type of lie help it spread.

This invalidates the whole list for me.

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/EDUCATION/11/20/geography.quiz/

"Only 89 percent of the Americans surveyed could find their own country on the map."

That's still pretty damned sad, but a little more than 10%. Oh, did you hear that a duck's quack doesn't echo?

FYI, I think that the stats in this topic were lifted straight out of this book (of which I own a copy IRL).

Unfortunately, I don't have it with me right now, so I can't look in it and find the sources for all the quotes.

These facts did appear in a real, printed book though. I'm not sure if that means they must have been checked for accuracy. If I can find the book amongst my library, I will see about finding the sources they list for these stats.

I got it from a book I found while at work that I thought was amusing, and i've been looking online for the verifications to them since the author doesn't give citations (something I thought was odd when I first looked, but I have been able to verify many of them... and this isn't every single one that was in the book, just the ones I thought were interesting)

Since a lot of the verifications require finding one number, then another number to compare it... any consolidated list of supporting evidence would take forever to lay out. I've been able to support most of them, the ones I haven't i'll keep looking if I feel like it. I only posted this because I thought it was interesting.

And, IWTSTDCTOC is kinda meaningless... it's ok if other countries do nearly the same thing? These are about the US because that's what the book was about, and honestly... it's the easiest target. The richest country in the world... one of the most influential in the world... and we're saying that things are ok because we're only a little worse than other people?

Anyway... I just thought it was fun to know, it was fun to look up corroborating evidence online... but having an argument about them is not fun. So, yeah

P.S.

Population of France = 60,656,178
Population of Texas = 20,851,820

You're right about that one, I think it was a typo in the book... i've found lots of places saying that 10% could *not* find the U.S. on a blank world map.

So, sorry about that.