Every country is the best at something. Sweden excels in pop music, Lithuania has the fastest wifi speed, Cuba has the best doctors, while Peru is top dog in producing cocaine (we didn’t say all of their achievements were wholesome).
According to data journalist and information designer David McCandless, Singapore’s the best at producing… healthy people?
Not even regarded as the world’s most expensive city or having the best airport or being ruthlessly efficient in producing nerdy kids — the 2016 edition of McCandless’ International Number Ones visualisation points out that we have the healthiest people in the world. While it may be true that Singapore’s one of the healthiest places to live in, latest statistics by the United Nations revealed that the top crown actually belongs to Iceland. Singapore and Sweden follows close behind at number two and number three respectively.
Nonetheless, Information is Beautiful did collate a rather interesting map of what each countries in the world are best at according to a number of databases that includes the CIA, World Bank, Reuters and Forbes.
What nations are best at don’t necessarily refer to favourable facets. China, for example, tops the world in jailed journalists; Australia has the highest incidents of data breaches; Ethiopia holds the most underweight children; Honduras was found to be utterly murderous; while Mongolia has the most er… Velociraptors. Raptor fossils, to be exact.
Other wacky finds include the fact that Pakistan watches the most gay porn, the United States sends out the most spam mail, Argentina produces the most horse meat, and Russia has the largest amount of dashcams per capita.
Check out the whole list of data behind McCandless’ infographic here, and see how we fared in the 2010 edition of the map (we were so good at ship refuelling). Or better yet, check out this politically incorrect visualisation of Singapore’s different districts and what each are notorious for.
