Making Sense Of The World, One Map At A Time
While researching my previous post on Is Your Country Richer or Poorer Than Mississippi?, I came across an interesting finding.
Washington DC with a population of 702,250 people and total GDP $185 billion (higher than 15 other states) has by far the highest nominal GDP per capita of any state or district in the United States at $263,220 in 2024.
The map shows which countries (and Canadian provinces) have a higher GDP per capita in nominal terms than Mississippi, the poorest US state with a GDP per capita of $53,061 in 2024.
Here is a full list of countries that made the cut:
The map above shows which countries use a unique currency symbol when showing prices (e.g. $, £, €) vs countries that just display prices using letters from the alphabet (RS, kr, etc.)
And in case you’re wondering what symbols are used:
The map concept comes from architecture firm XML‘s research into the various shapes of the world’s parliaments.
The vast majority of the world’s population lives in the North-East quadrant as based on the Prime Meridian and Equator.
The video above shows the smallest circle you can make that contains anywhere from 0.1% of the world’s population all the way up to 100% of it.
It comes from reddit user alexmijowastaken who explains that:
In 2012 Internet Explorer still reigned supreme in most of the English speaking world, with Chrome a popular choice elsewhere. Fast forward 13 years and Chrome has more less won with a few tiny holdouts.
Here is the global data by browser for March 2025:
And before looking at the map I would not have had Morocco as doing so before France.
The UK would finally recognise the United States as being independent in 1783 following the signing of the Treaty of Paris.
From the map creator:
The map above shows which of the 10 biggest cities in the world is closest to you (of course there’s a decent chance you may even live in one of them).
The author has gone with the 2018 estimates by the United Nations for their list of the 10 biggest.
The UN figures include a mixture of city proper, metropolitan area, and urban area and has a list of 81 cities with a population of over 5 million as you can see below:
To put that in some comparison the Hiroshima bomb was only about 15 kilotons.
Here’s more about them and their nuclear weapons program: