2006-05-08

fivemack: (Default)
2006-05-08 10:27 pm

Export statistics: they're all a load of inconsistent nonsense

According to the CIA Factbook entry for Russia,

Russia imports $15.68b worth of Stuff from Ukraine
Russia exports $11b worth of Stuff to Ukraine

According to the entry for Ukraine,

Ukraine imports $6.88b worth of Stuff from Russia
Russia exports $15.54b worth of Stuff to Ukraine.

There's no possible purchasing-power-parity adjustment that makes these figures make sense; where has the four billion dollars gone?

If you mutter darkly about corruption in the East, consider

US entry says US -> Canada is $213.3b
Canada entry says US -> Canada is $187.1b
Canada entry says Canada -> US is $310.4b
US entry says Canada -> US is $293.6b

which set of entries indicate that a sum of about the GDP of Kenya annually has been statistically mislaid.
fivemack: (Default)
2006-05-08 10:45 pm
Entry tags:

First trials of the Deparochialiser

Did you know that the US was more than 41 times the size of Portugal and Belarus combined? That Russia was more than 405 times the size of Denmark? That India was just under 78 times the size of Lower Saxony?

This kind of useful information is a side-effect of a proxy I've always wanted to write to remove the parochialisms in the CIA World Factbook - it's of little use to point out that some place is twice the size of Oregon. I haven't quite figured out how to set it up as a proxy yet (and also would rather avoid things that could be construed as imitating the CIA]