What Does This Population Map Tell You?

(click map for larger view)

Roger von Oech:

Shown below is a world map. The difference here is that countries are sized not according to their actual land area, but according to their respective populations.

Take a few minutes to study it. What do you notice? What comes to mind?

Here are several of my observations.

1) With its huge population size, why isn't India a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council? (The US, UK, France, Russia, and China are.)

2) As the GDP increases in large population states such as China, India, and Indonesia, world commodity prices will continue to soar.

3) Bangladesh and Nigeria, several places I don't think a lot about, are quite prominent. Iraq looks small wedged in there between Turkey and Iran.

4) The central Asian "Stans" — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan — which occupy a large land area look quite small on this population map (just north of Pakistan).

5) South America looks almost normal (i.e, like its area map).

6) Canada and Russia are each string-bean shaped like Chile (but fortunately for them, they each have the most Arctic Ocean waterfront property).

What do you notice?