One of my favourite podcasts is BBC's More or Less. At the start of 2012, they did a series on Numbers in 2011. I know it's a little late in sharing this, but here we go - enjoy.
I'm sharing with you a selection of the numbers from the 30min podcast. They are somewhat UK centric, but still worthwhile sharing.
Listen to the whole podcast here.
- 80%: developed world's debt to GDP ratio
- 1.37: cost of petro in GBP on 9 May 2011 (highest in 2011), due to duty, value added tax (20%) & exchange rate (weaker GBP against USD)
- 1%: BBALIBOR (interest to be paid in 3 months time) 10 Nov 2011 crossed 1%, doubling of the bank interest rate. BBALIBOR indicates the risk of money not being paid back in 3 months - a show of lower confidence/trust between banks.
- 2.64m: unemployment in UK by December 2011 (highest in 17 years). Note UK population is just over 62m.
- 900k: people today working beyond 65 years old in the UK
- 12,500: people celebrated their 100's birthday in 2011 in the UK; and will rise to 100,000 over the next 25 years
- 7bn: world population
- 2.5: average fertility of women on earth (babies per lifetime of earth, falling from 6 from 60 years ago), easing on the environment I suppose
- 3,000gbp: cost of sequencing the human genome; in 2003, the first sequencing of human genome cost 600m GBP - that's a 200,000 fold reduction in cost in 8 years
- 2 weeks: to sequence 5 human genomes in 2010; in 2003, it took 10 years for one
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