Blog
Behind the numbers
Notes on the data this site runs on — where it comes from, what it can prove, and where it falls short.
- 5 min read
How representative are country rankings?
The honest limits of ranking countries against US states: comparability grades, the measures we hide, data vintages, and what a median rank does and doesn't mean.
- 5 min read
How reliable is World Bank data?
Seven of our measures lean on the World Bank. What its numbers are good for, how often they get revised, and why PPP comparisons deserve a health warning.
- 5 min read
WHO, UNODC, and the problem of counting deaths
Police statistics and death certificates count the same tragedies differently. Why we rank homicide, suicide and overdoses on vital registration — not crime reports.
- 4 min read
Census, BEA, CDC, BLS: why US state data is unusually good
Ranking a country among US states only works because four federal agencies publish state-level numbers most countries can't match nationally — including price-adjusted GDP.
- 4 min read
Pinned snapshots: when we deliberately don't auto-refresh
Most of our data updates weekly by robot. Six datasets are frozen on purpose — PISA, the Yale environmental index, gun deaths and more — and reviewed by hand.
- 3 min read
Why the UK has no incarceration number
A short story about a deliberate blank: the UN reports prisoners for England & Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland separately — and we won't invent a UK total.