Kessler World of 100 Analysis

Posted by Jeffrey Kessler in Globalization - Laufenberg on Friday, February 10, 2012 at 12:20 pm

This chart shows how many people would speak a variety of languages if the world were only 100 people (with the same percentages as the current world). Most interestingly, there is a high amount of "other" languages spoken in the world.

This chart, using the same "world of 100" methodology, describes the world's cell phone usage. Notably, my guess for internet users was nearly spot-on, whereas it was greatly exaggerated by the rest of the class. In addition, it was interesting to see how the class viewed technology in terms of internet users being almost equivalent to cell phone subscribers.

This chart used the world of 100 method to compare religions. While I overstated the first two, it is rather interesting to see how accurate the class average came to the real number. Had my first two not been exaggerated, my results for the rest would've most likely been in line with the class and real results.

Overall, the answer for which I was most accurate was internet usage (where my guess was overestimated by only one person). This is most likely due to my technological experience and understanding of the internet. The answers for which I was least accurate were with literacy and electricity. I underestimated the percentage of households with electricity and similarly did so with education. The best attribution for such a result is that I have seen many activist programs for increasing overall literacy and technology access across the world; this caused me to over-emphasize these issues. The answer for which I was most shocked was that 75% of the world currently subscribes to a cell phone. This was most interesting as many other values for technology access are much lower. Thus, cell phones have become so widespread that they are a great way of expanding communication and internet access across the world.

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