Monday 2 February 2009

Hail, Hail Frydonia, Land of the Brave and Free

Yes, it's another post about Twitter, but we promise it's the last one for a OMFG JONATHAN ROSS SENT US A REPLY ABOUT HANDHELD GAMES CONSOLES THE OTHER DAY while. Twitter is really taking off now, as signified by the way National Treasure Stephen Fry (to use his full name) has raced from a having 60,000 followers, all the way up to 100,000 in just a matter of days.

This led to us clambering onto our special statistical train of thought. If National Treasure Stephen Fry actually were a European nation, and his followers citizens of said nation, where would it sit amongst the list of European countries when sorted by population? The nation could be called Frydonia, and at the time of typing this it would contain 102,408 happy subjects. Most of whom would probably be going to the Apple Store tomorrow for his appearance, only it's been snowed off.

Well, we've taken out our digital felt-tips, and constructed a chart, marking off his place in the list. And here it is, taking in just the thirteen lowest-ranked nations. Startling Microsoft Office-based revelation of the day: if you're going to use images as the filling for a data point, you can just paste in the location of an image from the internet, you don't need to save it to your hard drive first. This discovery means our charts are now prettier than ever.



Admittedly, we should have used an Apple Mac to compile all of that data, if we wanted extra authenticity points. Those figures in full:

Malta 402,668
Iceland 304,334
Frydonia 102,408
Jersey 87,186
Isle of Man 77,000
Andorra 67,000
Guernsey 62,101
Faroe Islands 47,000
Liechtenstein 35,000
Monaco 35,000
San Marino 28,000
Gibraltar 28,000
Ã…land Islands 26,771
Vatican City 821

So, the newly formed nation state of Frydonia has a larger population than eleven European nations (and yes, places like Jersey do count). Iceland and Malta are currently some way away, but as the population of Frydonia grows, surely they will soon be FLOUNDERING in the wake of a population-based TIDAL WAVE from the glorious new land of... we're taking this way too far, aren't we? Still, it's saved in our "C:/Disappointing Statistical Riffs" folder now, so expect future updates on the Fry-o-meter soon.

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Stipey Sullivan said...

Frydonia could well be hailed as one of the most technologically savvy countries in Europe. Sadly, they would likely still get beaten 10-0 by the Faroe Islands at football and in the fishing world cup.

I'll admit I'm a member but I'm in the new - let's give it a whirl - group, I may be forced to emigrate back to Couldntcarelessland depending on how this twitty thing goes. Sitting on the fence is an uncomfortable place to be.

Mark X said...

They might lose at football and fishing, but they'd get their outlying Danish territory asses KICKED at darts.

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