Internet Graphics - Facts behind the Memes

[Razgovory]

That graph doesn't even have a legend. Are you supposed to just guess what you're looking at?

Presumably the person who retweeted it chopped all the pointy head parts off.

Well that makes sense.  If they Kept the points on the heads it would have looked like they were wearing party hats.  That makes me wonder, if they were wearing party hats maybe it's graph of the most common birthday presents in each country.

[mongers]

I think so yes.

I don't think it presents energy consumption, but more narrowly electric consumption per capita, hence the comparisons with electrical goods.

Watt-hours are a unit of energy.  I am confused by the distinction between electric and energy here.

Typically total energy production/consumption seems to be given in ton/tonnes of oil equivalent.

Well using Wiki listings by country, my maths makes it the per capita annual electricity consumption in Ghana to be 250 kWh, whereas total energy use annual per capita works out at 382.2 kg of oil equivalent or 4461 kWh per year.

No idea if those figures are accurate from wiki, but I'd expect only a small amount of a developing African country's energy usage to be grid electricity, no doubt wood, kerosene and natural biomass products would be more important.

[Norgy]

My question is sources on the internet do you accept at face value and what others do you find useful, but of which you have to do some checking to verify what's being presented to you.

Mostly, I accept raw numbers from government statistics without further fact-checking. They usually also disclose some information about the methodology.
Otherwise, knowing how many employees there are in the PR business and how little journalists normally learn about quantitative methods, I trust that most of them will make errors and draw conclusions of causality based on correlation.

I am assuming this chart is in some way related to either power consumption or availability. While troubling, if it includes only electrical power consumption or availability, it doesn't present the entire picture, as many developing countries still use firewood as a primary energy source for say cooking.

[PDH]

My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it!

[Valmy]

I am assuming this chart is in some way related to either power consumption or availability. While troubling, if it includes only electrical power consumption or availability, it doesn't present the entire picture, as many developing countries still use firewood as a primary energy source for say cooking.

Well yeah it would hard to get good stats on that.

[Valmy]

I thought watts and watt hours were only related  to electricity.   

For example, I don't think you can talk about the  watts  in a gallon of gasoline.

Watts are a unit of power and of course you can.  Though with motors you typically use horsepower around here but that is just 735 or so watts.  So it would just be horsepower-hours, which could then be converted to miles per gallon.

[mongers]

I thought watts and watt hours were only related  to electricity.   

For example, I don't think you can talk about the  watts  in a gallon of gasoline.

Watts are a unit of power and of course you can.  Though with motors you typically use horsepower around here but that is just 735 or so watts.  So it would just be horsepower-hours, which could then be converted to miles per gallon.

If I'm cycling somewhere and I need to keep up a good pace, I generally aim to stay above 40,000 furlongs per fortnight.   

[Norgy]

Some day soon, a war will be fought over measurements. 

[dps]

I thought watts and watt hours were only related  to electricity.   

For example, I don't think you can talk about the  watts  in a gallon of gasoline.

Watts are a unit of power and of course you can.  Though with motors you typically use horsepower around here but that is just 735 or so watts.  So it would just be horsepower-hours, which could then be converted to miles per gallon.

Huh?  I'm pretty sure that the power output of an automotive engine can't be converted directly to miles per gallon.

[Viking]

Some day soon, a war will be fought over measurements. 

Never, first they'd have to agree on how to measure what a war is.

[mongers]

I thought watts and watt hours were only related  to electricity.   

For example, I don't think you can talk about the  watts  in a gallon of gasoline.

Watts are a unit of power and of course you can.  Though with motors you typically use horsepower around here but that is just 735 or so watts.  So it would just be horsepower-hours, which could then be converted to miles per gallon.

Huh?  I'm pretty sure that the power output of an automotive engine can't be converted directly to miles per gallon.

Rubbish, I used to own a Austin Allegro, I could rely on losing additional 1/4 power (one piston) output each 1,000 miles. 

[DGuller]

Watt-hours are a unit of energy.  I am confused by the distinction between electric and energy here.

I thought watts and watt hours were only related  to electricity.   

For example, I don't think you can talk about the  watts  in a gallon of gasoline.

You can't talk about watts in a gallon of gasoline, but you can talk about watt-hours in a gallon of gasoline.  Watts are a unit of power, watt-hours are a unit of energy.  And watts definitely aren't limited to electricity, it's just that we got into the convention of using horsepower rather than watts for things like car engines.

[Razgovory]

How much horsepower is in a pony?

[mongers]

How much horsepower is in a pony?

None, a pony is twenty-five quid.   

[Razgovory]

The horse power/pony thing is how I proved to my teacher that there really are stupid questions.