Population.io is a site that shows some interesting statistics about the world’s population in relation to the user. According to the site authors, “Our hope is that people from all walks of life, in all ages and across all countries will explore a new perspective of their own life and find their own place in the world of today and tomorrow.”
Once you input your birth date, country, and gender, you can learn what percentage of the world is younger than you (far too many, in my case), milestones in your life (such as that I was the 5 billionth person to be alive on April 5, 2012), the number of people who share your birthday, and various other facts that can make you feel very old and very small.
This seems like it could be a useful site to make your students more aware of how many humans actually share this not-so-large planet. It’s interesting to see how your life expectancy might change depending on where you live (so far, it looks like I probably should make a move to Spain in the near future), and could bring up deep conversations about the reasons for dramatic differences.
I have to admit that I was a bit disturbed by this offer at the bottom of the page:
I’m not really sure I want my iPhone (or its future equivalent) ringing an alarm to alert me of my imminent doom. But maybe it would be nice to be somewhat prepared…
Great tool to visualize lot of facts about the world population. Thanks for sharing. I’ve added the date of my expected death to Google Calendar.