Where people don’t live in the US: The nearly 5 million Census Blocks with zero population.

where-people-dont-live-in-the-USPhoto: mapsbynik/tumblr

A summary of the data direct from the source: “A Block is the smallest area unit used by the U.S. Census Bureau for tabulating statistics. As of the 2010 census, the United States consists of 11,078,300 Census Blocks. Of them, 4,871,270 blocks totaling 4.61 million square kilometers were reported to have no population living inside them. Despite having a population of more than 310 million people, 47 percent of the USA remains unoccupied.”

Unpopulated areas typically consist of parks, grazing land, desert and other places that are challenging to live in. A larger, interactive version of the map can be found here.

Where people don’t live in Canada.

where people don't live in CanadaPhoto: imgur

Data from the 2011 Census. Map by Michael Chung.

How much snow it typically takes to cancel school in the US (and the southern parts of Canada).

cool mapPhoto: ispol

Reddit user Alexandr Trubetskoy (aka atrubetskoy) used various points of data to create this map, which has been featured on The Atlantic,The Washington Post, NPR and Huffington Post.

Where countries import from the most.

cool map-1Photo: imgur

Point Nemo, a spot in the ocean that’s as far from land as you can get — surrounded by nearly 9 million square miles of water.

cool map-2Photo: Wikimedia

Located in the South Pacific Ocean, Point Nemo is 1,670 miles away from the closet piece of land: Ducie Island of the Pitcairn Islands.

The most popular beers in the world by country.

most popular beers by countryPhoto: imgur

Most common language spoken in each state other than English or Spanish.

Most common language spoken by statePhoto: Slate

Slate’s Ben Blatt created this map using data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Read all about it here.

Prefered camouflage by country.

Camouflages of the worldPhoto: imgur

How it’s possible to sail from Norway to Antarctica in a straight line without hitting land.

Norway to AntarticaPhoto: imgur

Close ups and detailed navigational instructions here.

The most recurrent word on each country’s Wikipedia page.

reccurent words on wikipediaPhoto: imgur

Heat map of the world’s wealth.

world's wealthPhoto: imgur

Based on 2009 data from the WorldBank. Each country is colored according to its average annual gross national income per capita.

How long it took to travel in the US in 1800.

US travel ca. 1800Photo: imgur

And you can compare that to travel times in 1830, 1867 and 1930 here.

US Google autocomplete results: “Why is [state] so…”

google auto complete by statePhoto: imgur

Canada Google autocomplete results: “[Province/Territory/City] is…”

google auto complete CanadaPhoto: imgur

The majority of the above maps were compiled from Reddit’s always entertaining MapPorn forum.

Communities featured in this article

More articles like this