Hello and welcome to the latest late edition of The Crunch!
In this week’s newsletter we have charts on the most mathematically sound way to slice an onion, which countries Trump’s new tariffs are going to target, how the airline industry is struggling to get sustainable fuel projects off the ground, how TikTok has changed the length of pop songs, whether a wealth tax could work in the UK and the record rise in uncertainty.
But first … have men really stopped reading books?
The demise of men reading books has, once again, been greatly exaggerated.
A recent article about Australians’ reading habits claimed “Australians, especially men, are reading less than ever before” and “the data showed females, on average, were reading more than males across all age groups”. Another ran with the headline “Young men have stopped reading books – and these are the reasons why”, which also said “the percentage of men who would pick up any book at all is very small”.
Nick took a deep dive into the surprisingly chaotic world of reading statistics and tracked down some hitherto unpublished survey data to show that reading has declined, regardless of gender:
The data also shows that a significant proportion of males are still reading books, though they’re doing so less frequently than they used to.
Four charts from the fortnight
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1. How TikTok has changed pop music
We loved this piece from the BBC’s Mark Savage and Jess Carr, which looked at the duration of songs in the UK top 40 over time:
The data shows a marked shift towards shorter tracks in the years after the release of TikTok. The article also goes into how song structure can change when the song is shorter overall and how more recently, there’s been a shift back to longer songs.
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2. Where Trump’s new tariffs will fall
The New York Times graphics team has this simple but effective map showing how countries around the world will be affected by new tariffs imposed by the Trump administration:
You can also toggle the map to show a cartogram where the counties are sized by import values!
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3. How the airline industry is struggling to get sustainable fuel off the ground
Reuters has produced an excellent investigation and visual feature looking at how the airline industry is struggling with sustainable jet fuel programs:
Reuters reports that of the 165 sustainable fuel projects announced over the past 12 years, only 36 have materialised.
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4. Could a wealth tax work in the UK?
The UK, like Australia, is grappling with the prospect of how to change their tax system. This visual feature from our UK colleagues lays out how much money a wealth tax could raise and how it might work:
Depending on how a wealth tax is designed, it could raise significantly more revenue than a freeze on income tax thresholds.
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4. We live in interesting times
In news that will surprised no one, global uncertainty has reached record highs:
We came across this chart while reading Nicki Hutley’s opinion piece about how we should focus less on interest rates in Australia. According to the economists who devised the index it is “computed by counting the percent of the word uncertain (or its variant) in the Economist Intelligence Unit country reports”.
A higher number means higher uncertainty, and the index is apparently associated with “greater economic policy uncertainty (EPU), stock market volatility, risk and lower GDP growth”.
Our bookmarks
European cartographers’ inaccurate maps of Australia have plenty to teach us
Texas redistricting: how new Republican maps will hurt Democrats
Off the Charts
What is the most mathematically optimal way to cut an onion? It’s an interesting geometry problem, which is laid out in amazing detail here by Andrew Aquino and colleagues in The Pudding:
The level of detail and design flourishes here (the onion font!!!) are amazing. Make sure you hit the explode button.
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