Poor and Sick vs. Rich and Healthy

Today in class we watched a video where Hans Rosling explained population and income trends using life expectancy and GDP per capita chart. This is very useful to see how far countries have come in terms of economy and healthcare. Personally, I thought China would have had their industrial revolution quicker than they did because of how big of a country they are now. Instead however, I learned that they developed their huge economy over about the past 10 years with the ridiculous number of factories and their very cheap labor.

Population Pyramid

I forgot to do a blog yesterday however I'm doing it now. We talked in class about the population pyramid. The population pyramid is a type of graph which allows you to see the amount of people in the population make up a certain age group. This very helpful when figuring out if a country's population is rising or falling. You can tell it's rising if the chart expands at the bottom and is smaller at the top. This also tells you the country is pre-industrial because they're having so many children and not a very long life expectancy.

Post Test Review

Today we got our tests back. I did super good on it. I got a 101 and I'm very proud of it. I think I could have definitely gotten a 104, but I made a dumb mistake which cost me 3 points. The surprising thing is that I didn't even study for this test. I just paid a lot of attention in class to the power-points and Mr. Schick speaking. I hope I can do just as well on the exams and future tests as I did on this one.

Test Day

Today we took the test on population. I think I did very well on it. The hardest part for me was coming up with another push force because I know countries where I wouldn't want to live but I couldn't give a description of why people would want to leave. I think I might have gotten 100 but I'm not very sure.

Test Review

Today we went over what the test is on tomorrow. I have a pretty good feeling about the test. I feel like I'll get a at least a B if not an A. We went through the CIA World Factbook again and looked at some of the statistics for different countries. The most surprising statistic I think is the immigration rate for Syria. They have the most people coming into their country than any one else in the world. I think this is crazy especially since Syria has such a bad reputation for being violent and definitely not a place you would want to live. This is probably because there is a war going on there so people are heading into the country to fight or something, but I'm not sure.

CIA Factbook Questions Overview

Today we went over the questions we answered using the CIA World Factbook. I thought these questions were very easy considering all we had to do was find where they were on the website. I find this website very interesting because I can learn about every country in the world on one webpage. The most interesting statistic to me was the amount of money spent on military. I thought for sure that a country like China would spend more money on its military than us, but they don't. We spend almost 3% more than they do. This must be why we have such a strong military.

World Facebook Questions

1. What is the population of China, and of India? 
   China: 1,384,688,986 India : 1,296,834,042

2. What is the Total Fertility Rate in Japan?
   1.42

3. What is the death rate in El Salvador?
   5.8 deaths/1,000 population
4. What percentage of the French identify “none” as their religion? Is this statistic verifiable, and why?
   23-28%, It isn't because a law in France prohibits the government from gathering information about peoples' ethnicity or religion.
5. What percentage of Mexicans identify themselves as Roman Catholic?
   82.7%
6. What is the GDP - per capita (PPP) in the United States?
   $59,800
7. What is the GDP - per capita (PPP) in Nigeria?
   $5,900
8. What is the GDP - per capita (PPP) in Luxembourg?
   $105,100

9. What percentage of the United States’ population are Internet users?
   76.2%

10. What is the number of airports in Russia, and in the United States?
    U.S. - 13,513 Russia - 1,218

11. How many people in the world do not have electricity?
    1.201 Billion

12. What is the Infant Mortality Rate in Canada, Cuba, and the United States? 
    Canada - 4.5 deaths/1,000 live births Cuba - 4.4 deaths/1,000 live births U.S. - 5.7 deaths/ 1,000 live births
13. What is the literacy rate - total, for men, and for women - in Afghanistan?
    38.2%
14. What three countries have the highest life expectancy?
    Monaco, Japan, Singapore
15. What three countries have the lowest life expectancy?
    Lesotho, Zambia, Afghanistan
16. What nation has the sixteenth highest Net Migration Rate?
    Monaco
17. What is the unemployment rate in Vietnam, South Korea, the United States, India and Kenya?
    Vietnam - 2.2% South Korea - 3.7% U.S. - 4.4% India - 8.5% Kenya - 40%
18. Military Expenditures are listed by the percentage of each nation's GDP spent on defense.

What percentage is spent by Germany, China, and the United States? 

Germany - 1.24% China - 1.87% United States - 3.16%

19. What three countries produce the most crude oil, and how much do they produce?
United States - 10,962,000 bbl/day Russia - 10,759,000 bbl/day Saudi Arabia - 10,425,000 bbl/day

20. What three countries import the most crude oil, and how much do they import?

United States - 7,969,000 bbl/day China - 6,710,000 bbl/day India - 4,057,000

21. What percentage of the world’s people speak Spanish? Chinese? English?

Spanish - 6%   Chinese - 12.3%    English - 5.1%

Population

We learned about crude birth rate and crude death rate. These two are by the 1000 of the population so even if one country is bigger than the other, you can figure out how much the population is rising in that country and compare it. One analogy we made was a person lifting weight and figuring out how much weight they're lifting according to their own weight and not the overall weight.

Got Test Back

I got my test back today and I got an 81%. I'm not very happy with my score because I knew all the material, but I just didn't understand the wording of some of the questions. We had a discussion about relative and absolute location and how some of the questions on the test we're ones that we thought were relative, but the answer was actually absolute. I think these questions were too vague and didn't make sense which is the reason I got a lower grade than I wanted.

Population and Settlement

• Over 7.6 billion people on the planet right now
• Increasing by 73 million a year
• 90% of the populations growth happens in developing countries
• U.S. life expectancy: (79.68 total:     77.32 Men,     81.97 Women
• Crude birth rate: number of births per 1000 of the population
• Crude death rate: number of deaths per 1000 of the population
• Rate of natural increase is found by subtracting the death rate from the birth rate
• People migrate for many reasons 
• Total Fertility Rate (TFR): Average number of children born per woman 
• For a population to remain the same, the TFR must be 2.1

Maps Quiz

I think I did very well on the test I took today. If I had to predict my score, I'd say I got every single one right. I felt very confident going into the test because I had listened intently during class to what Mr. Schick was saying. The questions were really easy too, especially since I didn't even need to look at my notes to answer any of them. I should start putting my notes more into my blogs incase we have another test like that because I don't really have any notes in my blogs at the moment.

Pop Quiz

Today in class we had a pop quiz. After going over it, I got a 9/10. I should have had 10/10, but I rushed and messed up on a really easy one. I felt pretty dumb when I was so confident to answer the question, and then was wrong. I'm not mad about a 9/10 however, because it's only 10 points and it's still an A.

Test Questions

1. What lines on a map run east-west?

Lines of latitude

2. What lines on a map run north-south?

Lines of longitude

3. Who created the first world map?

Eratosthenes

4. The art and science of mapmaking is _____.

A. Biology

B. Cartography

C. Astronomy

D. Geography

5. The Prime Meridian passes through _______.

A. London, England

B. Washington D.C.

C. Greenwich, England 

D. Southampton, England

6. Lines of longitude are known as ______.

A. Meridians

B. Parallels

C. Degrees

D. Seconds

7. Lines of latitude are known as _______. 

A. Degrees

B. Meridians

C. Parallels

D. Fractions

8. What does GMT stand for?

A. General Meridian Time

B. Greenwich Mean Time

C. General Mean Time

D. Greenwich Meridian Time

9. There are _____ time zones. 

A. 24

B. 25

C. 23

D. 58

10.  How many time zones make up the United States?

Six

Time Zones

Yesterday, I forgot to blog but we don't have class today. We talked about time zones and how different areas of the world go by different times. We talked about how some countries want the whole country in one time zone and how some are fine with their country being split into different ones. We also discussed the idea of having one time for the entire world. This theory would work but would take some getting used to because in some places the sun would rise at 6:00 PM and other places it would rise at 2:00 AM.