7 ms·

Nigerian Internet use increasing

• Mz 16y ago
  The first thing I thought when reading the title ("Graphs don't lie :) ) was: "There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damn lies and statistics." Presumably, graphs fall under "statistics".
  • donohoe 16y ago
    Oh, I thought they fell under "damn lies". My bad.
  • troymc 16y ago
    I cringe when I see that quotation trotted out as some kind of truth. It's a joke, popularized by Mark Twain. Statistics can be insignificant or misinterpreted, but the statistics themselves aren't lies: they are statements of fact (measurements and calculations based on those measurements). Statistics are some of the best tools we have for teasing meaning out of measurements. (If the "measurements" are actually made up, then yes, they are lies, but then the fault is with the person cooking the measurements, not the statistical tools they bring to bear. One can also misuse statistical tools, but again, the problem is with the user, not the tools.)
    • Mz 16y ago
      I always felt that the quote indicated that statistics are easily used to mislead with credibility. When I homeschooled my sons, I gave them a choice between the algebra/geometry/calc track and a statistics track. They chose statistics. An interesting book we included in our studies was "How to lie with statistics". (FWIW: I think there was a later book called something like "How to lie with charts and graphs".) My point was not that statistics are lies but just that the statement "Graphs don't lie" isn't some kind of unquestionable grand truth.
• hackermom 16y ago
  Based on that graph's numbers (dated 2008) combined with each country's 2009 population census (a percentile or two off, I know...): Nigeria: 15% United Kingdom: 75% Egypt: 17% South Africa: 8% Sweden: 85%
  • jeb 16y ago
    But look at the rate of growth...
    • hackermom 16y ago
      Yes it's impressive, if time stood still and politics never changed, but that's not how the world works :) Everyone knows from the lesson of "retrospectivity" that growth can be just a temporary rise, or just the spike before a decline etc. If we look at the UK's numbers in that same graph, after having travelled back to 2002 in our time machine, we could also say "but look at the rate of growth the past 4 years!", but looking back at the graph today, with "8 years later" of extra data... My underlying point was that no mistake in graphs and statistics is as common as the repeated mistake of us trying to predict the future from contemporary numbers, and always ending up being wrong a few years later down the road. Statistics need lots of time to mature and settle.
• prodigal_erik 16y ago
  46k of script and no HTML for it to progressively enhance. That's really disappointing; web authoring at Google is usually highly competent.
• pan69 16y ago
  If shown in percentage...
• deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
  • olalonde 16y ago
    Put China on the map ;)
    • oscardelben 16y ago
      It's interesting to see that 1.5 Billion of people have access to the internet today.
  • BenWalker 16y ago
    Put North Korea on the map!
    • Ardit20 16y ago
      It would probably be 0, or 1. Apparently in Cambodia it is only 70,000 or so, the lowest I found from quickly looking at "bad" countries. Iran has millions! Even Cuba has plenty. Must be sad to live in North Korea.
      • Amnon 16y ago
        You assume that Internet access makes you happier. I'm not sure. At least they are spared a lot of distractions :)
        • code_duck 16y ago
          They're also spared from distracting things like rice.
          • mahmud 16y ago
            Cambodia's largest export is rice. The country is bisected by the mighty Mekong river and the Tonle Sap is the largest lake in Asia. The whole country is lush; when it rains, the drops hurt your skin. Weeks of non-stop thunder and the soil doesn't seem to down a sip of it. If you believed in a fertility god, you would renounce your faith in it within sight of Cambodia, for the cruel abundance it has inflicted upon that land.
• jeb 16y ago
  The president of Nigeria already has 126k fans on facebook http://www.facebook.com/jonathangoodluck http://www.facebook.com/jonathangoodluck and 1700 comments for each of his daily posts. That's impressive considering that his account is just a couple of months old.
  • acangiano 16y ago
    That's small consolation to him; his brother, former president of Nigeria, died last year leaving several million dollars behind. They are currently trying to recover them through the aid of western citizens.
    • jeb 16y ago
      See here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1525639 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1525639
      • acangiano 16y ago
        Note that the two statements are quite different. The guy you replied to was implying that all Nigerians are scammers. I, on the other hand, implied no such a thing and simply made a joke about a type of fraud commonly originating from Nigeria.
        • jeb 16y ago
          It's about as funny as a joke about how Americans will invade your country, or italians will murder your cousin. Pointless jokes about silly stereotypes do not belong on forums where people try to discuss reasonably about things.
          • nsfmc 16y ago
            whoosh!
            • 16y ago
• natch 16y ago
  Is it really fair to say that people in China have access to the Internet? Maybe it's better to say that they have access to some AOL-ized version of the Internet, not the actual Internet itself. The difference between an open Internet and a closed one is not just a small difference of degree; they are entirely different things.
  • jeb 16y ago
    There are about 20 or 30 websites blocked in china. Not that many.
    • axod 16y ago
      websites aren't all equal. The top 20-30 websites in the world account for something like 90% of total internet usage.
    • wcoenen 16y ago
      The Golden Shield project employs thousands of people. They do a lot more blocking than "20 or 30 websites".
    • Ardit20 16y ago
      really? only 20 or 30? Hmm, I think there are more than 20 or 30 western newspapers and they probably are if not blocked then heavily censored.
    • albertzeyer 16y ago
      A very extreme underestimation. * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Peoples_Republic_of_China http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Peop... * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_notable_websites_blocked_in_the_Peoples_Republic_of_China http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_notable_websites_blocke... * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_words_censored_by_search_engines_in_the_Peoples_Republic_of_China http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_words_censored_by_searc...
      • jeb 16y ago
• arnorhs 16y ago
  Perhaps even more relative: internet penetration of the 16 largest countries by population: http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=it_net_user&idim=country:GBR&dl=en&hl=en&q=internet+penetration#met=it_net_user&idim=country:USA:IND:CHN:BRA:PAK:IDN:BGD:NGA:PHL:VNM:DEU:EGY:ETH:MEX:RUS:JPN http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=it_net_us...
  • adityakothadiya 16y ago
    Wow! China is a huge market. I know it was very big, but didn't know it's this huge. I wonder if China has equally good Startup ecosystem like USA which promotes innovation and entrepreneurship. Also, another question is - do US startups even have a strategy to focus equally on Chinese market like US market? If yes, how do they go about doing that?
    • Retric 16y ago
      Don't be fooled, if you consider income or even worse spending China is still a tiny market. 20 years from now it might be far more important, but for now it only has a voracious appetite for a small number of imports such as Oil and industrial secrets.
      • arnorhs 16y ago
        Well, that just means it's a great time to get into that market. If had already become huge and spending was huge, there would be lots of startups focusing on china. Perfect time to start laying out some groundwork.
      • elai 16y ago
        I've seen thai school teachers spend $10s of dollars on facebook games. In thai school teacher wages, that is something like like 3% to 10% of their monthly wage, which is significant. Don't underestimate a market like china. Protection from psychological traps like bad spending and keeping up with the jonses tend to be less there too unfortunately/fortunately. It's somewhat like ignoring the teenager market.
    • 16y ago
• seiha 16y ago
  The first thing that came to mind when I saw the graph was, "Geez, there's a quite a rise in scammers in Nigeria."
  • jeb 16y ago
    25 million pretty normal people would not find your statement very nice. The U.S sends a lot of Viagra spam - but that does not mean that all the internet users are sending viagra spam. Spam reaches a lot of people, because that's its intent. Extrapolating from spam is silly.
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• deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
• toysta 16y ago
  A more meaningful graph will be one that shows the % of population with internet access
• keyle 16y ago
  China freaks me out.
• motters 16y ago
  Interesting, that means that a very high proportion of UK citizens are connected to the internet, since the population is about 60 million.
• svag 16y ago
  It would be interesting to see also the quality of internet access, like PSTN or DSL etc and if there is any cencorship...
  • aitoehigie 16y ago
    There is no web censorship in Nigeria, only ISP's might ban a user from their network if a report was made about that user. The average 'broadband' speed in Nigeria is 200-400kbps and mostly wireless access. But with the completion of the MainOne submarine cable, it is expected that things here will change for the better. Nigeria's population is huge, 150million although the purchasing power of the average citizen is low, It's a strong emerging market.
• fauigerzigerk 16y ago
  Right, so finally we learn that the US is a bigger country than Sweden. Great.
• ciupicri 16y ago
  Is there a non-Flash version?
  • josefresco 16y ago
    Yeah same here, I'm sh*t out of luck on my iPad. So are most mobile users, where's the accessibility Google?
• atomical 16y ago
  Are there any web startups in Nigera that have been acquired or make significant profit?
• magma 16y ago
  The data on India is interesting. I would have thought there would be more than 50 million internet users in India. That's only about 4 per 100 people. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.BBND.P2 http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.BBND.P2 These numbers might be projections
  • jeb 16y ago
    India is not particularly well off. It has a higher poverty rate than Africa, for example.
    • w1ntermute 16y ago
      Is there something I'm missing? Africa is 45.78% http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=africa+poverty+rate http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=africa+poverty+rate India is 25% http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=india+poverty+rate http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=india+poverty+rate
      • jeb 16y ago
        http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/14/poverty-india-africa-oxford http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/14/poverty-india-af...
        • w1ntermute 16y ago
          There are more poor people in eight states of India than in the 26 countries of sub-Saharan Africa That doesn't say anything about the poverty rate. When the vast central Indian Madhya Pradesh state, which has a population of 70 million, was compared with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the war-racked African state of 62 million inhabitants, the two were found to have near-identical levels of poverty. So that means certain parts of India have equal or greater levels of poverty than certain parts of Africa. But the poverty rate as a whole is lower.
• known 16y ago
  I believe increased Internet use Will create jobs Will decrease crude oil consumption
  • mahmud 16y ago
    Nigerians are not the primary consumers of their own oil. No oil producing nation is.
    • fragmede 16y ago
      That sounds good, but whats your definition of an oil producing nation? I'd guess the meager amount of oil produced in the US is consumed by the US.