Texas is the second most populated State in the United States with 26.4 million people. More than 70% of Texas’ population is concentrated within the “Texas Triangle” cities of Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. This triangle contains 5 of the 20 largest cities in the United States and upwards of 17.7 million people.
The majority of of New York’s population is concentrated around New York City’s five boroughs — in fact, the state of New York has the highest percentage of it’s population concentrated in one city in the United States.
Above are two maps displaying California. The one on the left is a ‘normal’ map displaying each county by relative area size and colored by population density – red more dense and green less dense.
The map on the right is distorted relative to population size. What is striking is how much of California’s population is concentrated in the Bay Area and Los Angeles/San Diego. The Central Valley (between SF and LA) and Northern California (above San Francisco) despite their large area, make up a small proportion of California’s total population. For comparison, the Bay Area and Los Angeles/San Diego make up 26 million of California’s 38 million residents.
There are currently 7.4 billion people on earth. This number is expected to rise to 10 billion by 2080 (based on U.N. estimates). These numbers beg the question – just how many people can the planet support? And, in what regions is population growing, remaining stable, or decreasing?
The map above colors each county by the number of children a woman is expected to have on average. Virtually all of the developed nations, such as: the US, Canada, Europe (except France), Japan, etc. average somewhere between 1-2 children per woman. This rate is actually below the replacement rate (2.1 children per women) indicating that the countries (labelled in blue above) will have decreasing populations internally over the coming decades. This does not mean, however, that the country’s population will decrease, that will depend on the number of immigrates it attracts. For example, the US and Canada attract the largest number of immigrates from across the globe which continue to bolster their population despite low birth rates internally. Conversely, a country with a low birth rate and restrictive immigration will show signs of drastic population decrease as in Japan – it has one of the lowest birth rates in the world with only 1.4 children per woman and has lost population in the past decade.
On the other end of the spectrum, Africa is exploding in population. The continent today has roughly 1 billion people. This figure is expected to double to 2 billion in just 30 years! Some countries – Niger, Mali, Burundi, Somalia – average more than 6 children per woman. It will be a time of drastic demographic change in central Africa over the next generation that may threaten the stability of the region further.
Middle income countries are mostly labeled in green in the above map indicating a healthy, moderate growth in population. For example, India (the world’s 2nd most populated country) averages 2.5 children per woman and Indonesia (the world’s 4th most populated country) averages 2.2.
The Bay Area is home to 7.6 million people. The graphic below displays the population density across the various regions. The North Bay is sparsely populated with mostly agricultural and mountainous terrain. San Jose is the largest city in the Bay Area at 1 million inhabitants, although it’s population density is average for a large city with only 5,600 people/sq mile. Compare that with Oakland (at 7,417 people/sq mile) or San Francisco (the densest city in the US outside of NYC) at 17,246 people/sq mile! 
The graphic above displays a world map distorted relative to the population of each country and has pink bubbles indicating the location of the top 200 ranked universities in the world. The relative size of the bubbles indicate that the university is located closer to the top of the rankings and vise versa for smaller bubbles. What is striking about this map is the inequality of top universities globally, with virtually all of the top 200 schools located in the developed world.
Further, the concentration gets even more extreme at the very top of the rankings. From the 2015 numbers, the top 50 universities in the world are located in just 12 countries. The United States has a huge advantage in premier universities with 25 of the top 50 and 10 of the top 15! The next closest on the list is the United Kingdom with 7 in the top 50 (3 of these 7 in the top 10 – Oxford, Cambridge, and Imperial College London).
North America, Europe, and Australia account for 45 of the top 50 universities in the world. The remaining 5 located outside the western world are: National University of Singapore (26th), Peking University (42nd), University of Tokyo (43rd), University of Hong Kong (44th), and Tsinghua University (47th).
The graphic above displays the change in regional and country GDP as a fraction of global GDP from the period 1820 through 2012. The picture tells a story of the rise of ‘the west’ during the industrial revolution and the corresponding fall of the Asian world powers from 1820 through the mid 1900’s. Then following economic reforms in the late 1900’s, Asian giants re-emerging and gaining market share of global GDP corresponding with a fall by western powers.
In 1820, China and India together made up 49% of world GDP, but by the late 1970’s this figure had fallen to less than 5% combined. That is, China and India – countries that make up 37% of the world population, only accounted for 5% of world GDP. Since that time, China and India have had drastic economic growth and now account for 21% of global GDP.
The graphic also tells the tale of the United States emerging as a global super power. From 2% of global GDP in 1820 to a peak of 36% following WWII. In fact, the 36% of world GDP figure is the highest mark by any country in history – All this accomplished by a country with only 5% of world population. The stagnate economic growth since the 1970’s is comparable to Europe, although not quite as drastic. The US and Europe still account for 35% of world GDP combined.
Overseas military bases enable a country to conduct expeditionary warfare and maintain order in their respective areas of control. The vast majority of countries in the world are not powerful enough to exhibit influence outside their defined boarders – they have a difficult enough time maintaining order within ‘their’ country as is. In fact, there are only 9 countries that have a military base located outside their own territory. Further, most of these countries only have influence (bases) around countries that boarder them and are not much of a global force.
The map above displays the location of Russian military bases aboard. All of these are located in former USSR and other past communist allies. Russia has 9 bases located in another country’s territory, fourth most by a country in the world. Below is a list of the 9 countries that have bases located in other nation’s territory (note – this is not the number of total bases, but the number of countries that listed country has bases located in):
Japan – 1, China – 1, India – 2, Turkey – 4, Italy -5, Russia – 9, UK – 13, France – 14, USA – 63
Another way to look at this is:
All other countries combined – 47, USA – 63
The US military has over 255,000 actively deployed personnel in 156 countries and currently has over 800 bases on 63 countries worldwide. The underlying land surface area of these bases is estimated at 30 million acres (46,875 sq mi) – roughly equal in area to the country of Greece (which itself has 7 US military bases on its territory). With so many countries with active US military bases on them – it begs the question if these countries are truly sovereign nations at all.
As more of the economy and economic growth is intertwined with the internet – speed and connectivity are highly important to the success of countries in the 21st century. As displayed above, there is large disparities in internet access and connectivity speeds between countries in the developed world and in undeveloped areas.
In the 2015 Q3 ranking by Akamai, the top ten countries by average connection speed (in Mb/s) were: (1) South Korea 20.5, (2) Sweden 17.4, (3) Norway 16.4, (4) Switzerland 16.2, (5) Hong Kong 15.8, (6) Netherlands 15.6, (7) Japan 15.0, (8) Finland 14.8, (9) Latvia 14.5, and (10) Czech Republic 14.5.
In comparison to other developing countries in the world: Mexico ranks 68th at 5.5 Mb/s, China 91st at 3.7 MB/s, Brazil 93rd at 3.6 Mb/s, and India 116th at 2.5 Mb/s.
The United States is ranked 16th in the world by average connection speed at 12.6 Mb/s, slightly above average in the developed world. Although, the numbers are skewed in favor of small density connected countries without rural areas to bring the average down. The US average may be slower than some small dense northern European countries, but when compared the the European Union as a whole, the US is much faster – 12.6 Mb/s to 8.1 Mb/s.
If the US states where ranked individually, Washington D.C. would rank 2nd in the world in average internet connection speed, Delaware 3rd, Utah 6th, Massachusetts 7th, and Rhode Island 10th. As of 2014, the US state with the slowest average internet speed was Alaska at 7 Mb/s.
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