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<< What can you learn about the world's population from pasta? Photograph from Corbis

Translate dry population statistics into vivid graphics.

Quick survey question: Which sentence below gives you the most information?

   • China has an enormous population.
   • China has a population of 1.3 billion people, and Russia has a population of 145 million.

Geographers, demographers (population experts), and other "-ographers" count on statistics (information in number form) to help them to be precise and specific. The meaning of "enormous," after all, can vary widely, depending on one's perspective. (A town of 10,000 people might seem enormous to someone from a village of 150.)

Problem is, numbers can get dull pretty fast. That's where graphs, diagrams, and other illustrations come in handy. They make patterns and contrasts much more dramatic, which helps readers get the picture—so to speak—quickly and clearly.

Ready to see the world in new ways? (Correct answer is yes, in case you were wondering.) The first step, strange as it sounds, is to borrow some uncooked pasta from the kitchen. You'll need two different kinds.

Examine the information in the offline activity "Create a Pasta Map", on the left, and then create your own way of displaying the statistics, based on the suggestions provided.

Younger Xpeditioners: Print the world map from the Xpeditions Atlas. Find and mark the ten countries with the most people. Would you like to live in one of the countries? Think about how your life would be different in a country with a larger population. What happens when more people live in the same amount of space?

What would happen if more children joined a classroom in the middle of the school year? Would the classroom be a better place to learn? If the number of students doubled, what changes might your teacher have to make?

Older Xpeditioners: Pick one of the ten most populous countries and print a map of it from the Xpeditions Atlas. On the map write the country's population, average income, and life expectancy, based on statistics that can be found at the Population Reference Bureau. Create a theory about what life might be like in this country.

Find the country's profile in the MapMachine. Does the information in the profile make you want to revise your theory?

Parents: You can get a wealth of demographic information from the World Population Data Sheet produced by the Population Reference Bureau. Each type of statistic sheds a slightly different light on a country's population.

Once your kids have grasped the basics of this activity, you might encourage them to look for patterns in the ten most populous countries. Do people in richer countries seem to live longer? How similar are the top ten countries from the same continent?

Is there any relation between the size of a population and its average income? If not, what other information might help explain differences in income?