NEW THING: Regular chart-based updates. Not that we’re trying to steal Ampp3d’s idea or anything. Heck, no.
Anyway.
You know when you’ve got an idea for a brilliant pub quiz question, only you’ve no idea what the answer actually is? Well, what with the World Cup being on at the moment, we got to thinking: what IS the smallest nation ever to win the World Cup (after Uruguay)?
Not a bad one, assuming your local pub quiz isn’t one of those where any reference to football will have half the teams rolling their eyes in irritation. It’s one that sets the mind racing to think just which teams have won the World Cup, and what would their respective populations have been at the time of winning the Coupe De Monde? Yes, populations at the time of winning each final. You’ve got to do these things properly.
Well, because we’re blessed with the kind of brain that will make us forget where our keys are because all runtime has become irreversibly devoted to some stat-related miscellany, we’ve worked it out. No need to thank us NOT THAT YOU EVER DO.
Historical census data has been taken from the splendid Geohive (with the caveat in place that Uruguay didn’t collect census data until 1963, so we’ve have to use the 1963 figure for 1930 and 1950), and – as Geohive only list historical census information for the UK as a whole, A Vision Of Britain for the English historical census data.
Anyway. Numbers!
So: it’s Argentina 1978, with the piffling population figure of 23,978,532. And knowing is half the battle!
What does this mean for the last eight of this year’s tournament? Could any of those take the, erm, much sought-after crown if you discount Uruguay? Another chart.
So, there it is. Three-fifths of the quarter finalists could become the brand new second-smallest-nation-to-win-a-World-Cup. And who is most likely to win the 2014 World Cup? Well, the average population of a World Cup winning nation is 58,557,534. The nation still in the competition with the closest population to that is FRANCE.
And there you go. France will definitely win the World Cup. That’s the lesson from today’s Chart Beat.
TOMORROW: HOW SEXIST IS MOCK THE WEEK?
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