Surprising statistics (part 2)

I've featured surprising statistics before on the Charles Fudgemuffin blog, so it should come as no surprise that this week I round-up another batch of surprising statistics!*

* For clarification, the statistics themselves may be surprising, but my inclusion of those statistics in this week's blog post shouldn't come as a surprise.

"Have you farted?"
"No, it's just the obnoxious spray from my scent glands."

To start things off, here's a surprising statistic about farts!

1) Parp!

Every second, over a million people in the world fart!

The average person farts 14 times per day, and there are approximately 7.7 billion people in the world.*

* At the time of writing.

There are 86,400 seconds in a day, so if we assume that a typical fart lasts for 1 second or less, than an average person will fart during 14 of these 86,400 seconds.

So the number of people who fart each second is:

14 farts / 86,400 seconds x 7,700,000,000 people = 1,247,685 farts every second!

2) Fold me to the Moon

A photo of the Moon taken by someone who
obviously wasn't very good at aiming centrally.

It will definitely surprise most people to discover that if you folded a piece of paper in half repeatedly, after only 42 folds it would be thick enough to reach the Moon! You're probably thinking, 'No way! That can't be true!', but seriously, it is! It's true! 42 folds!

This is a statistic I featured on the Charles Fudgemuffin blog back in November 2017, and at the time I promised that I would provide an explanation in a future blog post. Well, almost two years later I'm finally keeping my promise!

Anyway, here's the calculation:

i) A typical sheet of paper is 0.1 millimetres thick.
ii) The Moon is on average 384,000 kilometres away from the Earth.

The key thing to remember is that the thickness of the paper doubles with every fold.

So to prove it for yourself, type '0.1' into a calculator, then multiply by two, 42 times. You'll get an answer of 439,804,651,110.4 millimetres. Divide this by 10 to get centimetres, divide again by 100 to get metres, then finally divide again by 1,000 to get the answer of 439,805 kilometres.

If you fold this sheet if paper in half 42 times,
it would be thick enough to reach the Moon!

To pick out a few key folds:

1 fold = 0.2 millimetres
2 folds = 0.4 millimetres
10 folds = 102.4 millimetres (or 10.24 centimetres)
20 folds = 10,485.76 centimetres (or 104.86 metres)
30 folds = 107,374 metres (or 107.37 kilometres)
40 folds = 109,951 kilometres
41 folds = 219,902 kilometres
42 folds = 439,805 kilometres

Thicker than the distance from the Earth to the Moon!

If you want a visual exercise to help you understand why the thickness increases in so few folds, then hold your hands approximately 50 centimetres apart. Now half the distance by moving your right hand. Now half the distance again ten more times. As you can see, the distance becomes very much smaller very quickly indeed. With the paper folding exercise, this process is reversed, which is why it only takes 42 folds before a sheet of paper is thick enough to reach the Moon.




To round things off, here's a surprising statistic which may be particularly disappointing for any 45 year old men reading this...

3) Congratulations, you didn't die!

"Who wants to be a millionaire! I do!"

A 45 year old man has more chance of dying on the way to buy a lottery ticket, than he does of winning the jackpot!

The chance of dying on the way to buy a lottery ticket is 14,155,669 to 1!

The chance of winning the lottery is 45,057,474 to 1!

Footnote: Remember, a lower number means it has more chance of happening, i.e. a 1 in 1 chance would mean you would definitely die!

So it's approximately 3 times more likely that the man will die on his way to buy a lottery ticket, than he will win the jackpot!

Here's the calculation to explain it:

1) Chance of winning the lottery

The UK lottery has 59 numbers, and you need to correctly guess six numbers to win the jackpot, so the chance of guessing all six numbers correctly is:

6/59 x 5/58 x 4/57 x 3/56 x 2/55 x 1/54 = 45,057,474 to 1


2) Chance of dying

Your chance of dying increases every year as you get older.

For a 45 year old male, his chances of dying in the next year is 3,713 micromorts.*

* https://www.coursehero.com/file/5956239/MicroMorts/

This means he has a 3,713 chance in a million of dying in the next year, which equates to a 269.32 to 1 chance of dying in the next year.

If we assume it takes ten minutes to buy a lottery ticket, then his chances of dying during that 10 minutes is:

269.32 x 365 days x 24 hours x 60 minutes / 10 minutes = 14,155,669 to 1

So once again, it's approximately 3 times more likely that the man will die on his way to buy a lottery ticket, than he will win the jackpot!

Footnote: The chance of dying depends on the age and sex of the ticket buyer, and the time they take to buy a lottery ticket. To simplify things, old people have a greater chance of dying than young people, and men have a greater chance of dying than women. For this example I used a 45 year old male, as they're fairly central on the micromorts scale.

You can find more statistic related blog posts below:
Micromorts: The risk of dying
Christmas statistics
Things that happen every second