You’re (Not) Just A Number

I’ve always felt that a statistic course in highschool and/or university should be a compulsory part of education. Don’t get me wrong, I hated stats the first time I took it in grade 12, and I hated it even more after taking it again in second year of university. Despite my unfortunate double run in with z-scores, standard deviations, and chi squares however, I realize that I can no longer look at numbers, or any other form of information for that matter, in the same way again. If you further consider that I believe that critical thinking is the most important, and yet incredibly lacking, skill that should be taught in schools, you can see now why I vouch for mandatory stats courses. Chris Jordan is a photographer that understands our misunderstanding of statistics. “My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 426,000 cell phones retired every day”.

Two million plastic beverage bottles are used in the U.S. every five minutes. (Click on the images to make them larger).



Plastic Bottles, 2007

60,000 plastic bags are used in the U.S. every five seconds.



Plastic Bags, 2007

The U.S. government spends 125,000 one-hundred dollar bills ($12.5 million) every hour on the war in Iraq.



Ben Franklin, 2007

106,000 aluminum cans are used in the U.S. every thirty seconds.



Cans Seurat, 2007

All images from www.chrisjordan.com

You should also check out his 2003-2005 series “Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption” and then think about how you can become less wasteful. Chris Jordan is a recipient of the Natural World Museum’s and the United Nations Environment Programme’s 2007 Green Leaf Award.