Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data

by Charles Wheelan

Both. The British news magazine the Economist reconciled the two seemingly contradictory views of American manufacturing with the following graph.

This is consistent with data from the CIA’s World Factbook showing that the United States is the third-largest manufacturing exporter in the world, behind China and Germany. The United States remains a manufacturing powerhouse.

Given that our goal is to ameliorate human misery, it makes no sense to give China (population 1.3 billion) the same weight as Mauritius (population 1.3 million) when examining the effects of globalization on the poor.

As the Economist points out, “If you consider people, not countries, global inequality is falling rapidly.”

So what are the top grossing films in the U.S. of all time, adjusted for inflation?6 1. Gone with the Wind (1939) 2. Star Wars Episode IV (1977) 3. The Sound of Music (1965) 4. E.T. (1982) 5. The Ten Commandments (1956)