Never Tell Me The Stats!

Note: it may be that I happen to lie somewhere on the right side of the bell curve when it comes to this very particular skill of memorising statistics, such that it proves less actionable for most: nonetheless, I think it may be worth trying.

"Never memorize something that you can look up"

— Albert Einstein

To be honest, I've always found this quote rather stupid. Of course, it's meant to be hyperbolic. But human memory capacity is not particularly zero sum, and one suffers a much greater time delay in the procurement of relevant information through manually looking it up. In addition, in the age of Google, this sentiment would suggest that one should remember almost nil.

I will make the case that storing a somewhat large amount of specific statistical information that most people don't try to remember, namely, the population, GDP and GDP per capita figures for most at least semi-important countries, and the population counts of the world's most important cities, is actually quite useful. As an extension to that, glancing at historical economic and demographic trend charts is also rather helpful. 

It's not that it's particularly useful in any sort of very direct, tangible way: of course, you might score a point in a trivia contest, or it might act as a mildly cool party trick among certain types of people, but that's not why I'm recommending it. Rather, I'd argue that it bestows a more general, contextual understanding of the world. Let me give an extreme example to illustrate my point: if you thought China only had 100 million people, or still had a GDP per capita of $2000, you might be a bit puzzled by the ascending global significance of China. If you thought Nigeria was about as populated as any other similarly sized African country, instead of the towering 200 million people (set to reach almost 400 million by 2050, and a staggering 752 million by the end of the century), you'd have a hard time understanding why Lagos is the most populated city in Africa, and why Nigeria is increasingly such a big deal.

In a less extreme sense, why does Germany wield such power in the EU? Well, part of reason is that it has about 18 million more people than the runner-up, France. Australia seems to have at least a somewhat important role on the world stage: given it's physical size and economic power, you might have suspected it had a relatively large population, until you learn it's just 24 million, which means there must be other factors that allow them to punch above their weight. Why is tiny little South Korea so important geopolitically? It helps to know that 51 million people squeeze together in the southern part of the peninsula, with a nominal GDP of $1.44 trillion, far larger than Russia.

There's just this general sense in which the past, present and future makes more sense in light of these numbers. The puzzle pieces fit together better when you're reading the newspaper. Try some spaced reptition with Anki and see if it does anything for you.