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The average person is awake for 15.5 hours per day, but once you subtract hours committed to work, eating, chores, personal care, and errands, there’s only so little much free time leftover. That’s why the amount of time spent commuting, either in a car or via transit, can be a massive difference maker towards a person’s quality of life. The Average Commute Throughout the United States, the average commute time works out to about 26 minutes one-way....

Of course you do… The world is awash with apps and internet services that ask potential users to agree to a service agreement. Most people click on ‘agree’ and move on, knowing that reading the service agreements could put them to sleep and defer their favorite internet fix. Taking inspiration from designer Dima Yarovinsky’s project titled I Agree, today’s post visualizes the length of service agreements, by counting the words and calculating how long it would take users to read each one....

In 2003, total household debt was $7.23 trillion, but that figure has recently doubled to $14.56 trillion in 2020. With just under 130 million households in the country, this equates to an average of $118,000 of debt per household. Here’s how the various forms of U.S. household debt compare. Mortgages: Steep Price to Pay for Home Ownership Making up roughly 70% of all household debt, and growing $5.1 trillion since 2003, mortgage debt now stands at $10....

The International Olympics Committee (IOC) partly reinforces this, as it doesn’t pay its participating sportspeople anything. But for those athletes going for the gold, silver, and bronze, the sweet sense of achievement that comes with winning a medal is sometimes accompanied by a big check—though these prizes don’t come from the IOC either. The Winners Take It All For placing at the podium and bringing home a medal, some countries promise their athletes significant bonuses—shooting as high as a six-figure range....

Out of the 188 cognitive biases that exist, there is a much narrower group of biases that has a disproportionately large effect on the ways we do business. These are things that affect workplace culture, budget estimates, deal outcomes, and our perceived return on investments within the company. Mental mistakes such as these can add up quickly, and can hamper any organization in reaching its full bottom line potential....

Beyond the headlines and raw census numbers, it can be difficult to take population patterns into perspective. The talented team over at The Pudding has created an amazing, granular map that shows these patterns as 3D stacks. Our focus today will be on growth between 1990 and 2015, as urban settlement patterns across Canada and the U.S. shifted dramatically over this relatively short timeframe. Let’s take a look. Growing Cities One of the most dramatic examples of robust growth is Toronto....

Though that dream may not be realized in the short term, sales of smart speakers are increasing as people warm up to the idea of using voice-assisted devices in their homes. Today’s infographic, from Raconteur, sheds light on the fight for smart speaker market share, how early adopters are using the devices, and the growing array of voice-enabled devices currently on the market. Moving into the Mainstream The recent flurry of holiday device buying seems to support this prediction....

on #1: High Reliability Nuclear power plants run 24/7 and are the most reliable source of sustainable energy. Nuclear electricity generation remains steady around the clock throughout the day, week, and year. Meanwhile, daily solar generation peaks in the afternoon when electricity demand is usually lower, and wind generation depends on wind speeds.As the use of variable solar and wind power increases globally, nuclear offers a stable and reliable backbone for a clean electricity grid....

If you follow the news, the world can seem pretty grim at times. This pessimistic view of global affairs is common. We’ve been trained by the media to believe that things are always getting worse – and not surprisingly, people extrapolate these perceptions onto issues like poverty. One survey in the U.K. is the perfect barometer for this kind of public pessimism: in 2016 an Oxfam poll found that 87% of people thought that global poverty was staying the same or getting worse....

Rise of ETFs and Passive Investing Passive investing is huge, but it’s barely made a dent on active The Chart of the Week is a weekly Visual Capitalist feature on Fridays. For the investing world, the meteoric rise of ETFs, or exchange-traded funds, has been a key story to follow since the 2008 crisis. The ETF landscape has changed dramatically over that timeframe. In 2007, there were 1,181 ETFs that existed worldwide....

The rate at which newly commercialized technologies get adopted by consumers is also getting faster, too. In the modern world, through increased connectivity, instant communication, and established infrastructure systems, new ideas and products can spread at speeds never seen before – and this enables a new product to get in the hands of consumers in the blink of an eye. Visualizing Technological Adoption Today’s dynamic chart comes to us from Our World in Data, and it allows you to compare the adoption rates of new technologies over the period of more than a century....

According to forecasts from earlier this year by the World Bank, the global economy is expected to average a Real GDP growth rate of 2.8% between 2017-2019. But where will this growth actually happen? Is it in giant countries that are growing at a stable 2% clip, or is it occurring in the smaller emerging markets where 8% growth is not uncommon? Today’s chart looks at individual countries between 2017-2019, based on their individual growth projections from the World Bank, to see where new wealth is being created....

Given the economic pressures of today’s world, these alternative housing solutions have become not only a viable option for many people, but a vital one. Today’s infographic from Calculator.me illustrates how the tiny home market got so big, and how it fares against traditional housing when it comes to providing environmentally friendly and affordable options. How Did Tiny Homes Get So Big? It was not until the 2009 recession hit the U....

However, this highly-integrated Great Lakes economic engine is different than many others – that’s because it has an international border right down the middle of it. The area’s five massive freshwater lakes are actually nestled right between eight U.S. states and two Canadian provinces, making frictionless trade a necessity to stay competitive in global markets. How This Supply Chain Works Today’s infographic comes to us from the Council of the Great Lakes Region, and it details the integration of the cross-border supply chain that helps the region make goods that are competitive in international markets....

Additionally, the U.S. military also owns, leases, or operates an impressive real estate portfolio with buildings valued at $749 billion and a land area of 26.9 million acres⁠, of which around 98% is located within the United States. This visual, using data from the Department of Defense (DoD) reveals how much of each state the U.S. military owns, leases, or operates on. This map visualizes the share of a state comprised by military sites, which the Department of Defense defines as a specific geographic location that has individual land parcels or facilities assigned to it....

Canada’s Resource Cities: Thunder Bay & Northwestern Ontario In this series of five infographics, we will be highlighting some of Canada’s most intriguing resource cities. Today’s post is sponsored by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Thunder Bay Chamber of Commerce. What makes Thunder Bay one of Canada’s most prominent resource cities? An 18 hour drive from Toronto, Thunder Bay is the furthest thing from a typical city along Ontario’s most populous corridor....

For example, one unnamed stock broker I know had himself and his clients in a soaring gold stock called Bre-X in 1997. There was way less connectivity at this time, and this person was on a trip to Vegas for some sun and fun. Staying at Caesar’s Palace, he went out for a short while as the stock was trading near its highs of $286.50 per share. When he got back to the hotel, he found out that news had already spread quickly: during a due diligence test, mining company Freeport had twinned seven drill holes, finding not even a trace of economic gold....

A Timeline of Failed Tech Predictions In the realm of technology, predictions about the future are famously hard to make. Technology evolves at a logarithmic pace. Even small incremental changes over time can compound to create an entirely different business reality in the future. Entire industries can be created or changed out of nowhere, as companies go from “zero to one”, as Peter Thiel might say. Today’s infographic celebrates those that were in positions of strength that were brave enough (or foolish enough) to make bold predictions about the future of technology....

Once in a while, however, a very special type of civil engineering marvel gets finished that is earmarked to forever exist in a league of its own. Civil Engineering Feats Today’s infographic comes to us from Norwich University, and it counts down the 10 most impressive civil engineering projects ever completed by humanity. These unique and extremely bold endeavors tend to exceed all normal standards of size, complexity, and manpower required....

Even though the end destination is usually a bullish one, markets often take a far more scenic route to get there. Sometimes that means going off the beaten path, and other times it may mean taking a step directly backwards to get reoriented. In investing parlance, the latter situation can be described as a market correction: a short-term duration market move between -10% and -20%. These are significant declines that can be a “gut check” for investors, especially for those who haven’t experienced many of them in their investing careers....