This past week, History premiered a new show called the United Stats of America. No, that’s not a typo. It’s a show hosted by twin brothers who are both stand-up comedians and obsessed with statistics.

Since I’m also obsessed with statistics (I’m still working on the stand-up comedy part), I thought I’d check it out to see if I could relate any of their stats to common applications of Minitab statistical software.

The show attempts to reveal some of the most interesting and surprising statistics in America. For example, only 8 percent of teenage boys use soap when they wash their hands. And once a year a meteor the size of a boulder hits the Earth with the destructive force of an atomic bomb (don’t worry; 70 percent of the Earth is covered in water, so odds are you’ll be OK). On top of that, more Americans are killed by deer each year than snakes. In fact, snakes aren’t nearly as dangerous as people think. Your odds of dying from a snake bite are about 1 in 50 million.

Photograph by Cotinis

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