TravelStatsMan data tools

Interactive ways to explore the numbers — maps, comparisons and a guessing game built on the same sourced data as the rest of the site.

Most travel statistics arrive as a flat headline figure. These tools let you handle the data instead: pan a world map to compare countries side by side, test your own instinct against the real number before it is revealed, or line up the practical options behind a figure. Each one runs on the same checked, dated sources as every report on the site, and each names the dataset and year it draws on so the numbers stay traceable.

There are three of them. An orthographic world globe recolours all 220-plus countries by whichever dataset is chosen. A draw-the-trend game shows the opening years of a real series and asks the reader to sketch the rest before the truth is revealed. And a plain comparison table lines up the travel eSIM plans behind the connectivity figures. None of the three hides a number behind the interaction — every tool falls back to the full underlying table and links out to the study it came from.

Explore the world by the numbers

Colour every country by a live figure — the price of mobile data or petrol, passport power, internet speed or the cost of a Big Mac — then read the top and bottom ten. Drag to spin, search for a country, or switch the dataset.

The spread inside each dataset is the interesting part. A gigabyte of mobile data costs about $0.02 in Israel and $43.75 in Zimbabwe — a gap of more than two thousand times for the same unit of data. A Singaporean passport opens 192 destinations visa-free against 24 for an Afghan one on the Henley Passport Index 2026. Median mobile download speeds run from 645 Mbps in the United Arab Emirates down to 5 Mbps in Eritrea. Petrol ranges from roughly $0.04 a litre in Venezuela to $2.60 in Hong Kong, and a Big Mac costs $9.08 in Switzerland but $2.47 in Taiwan. The globe makes those extremes visible at a glance instead of leaving them buried in a ranked list.

Switching datasets keeps the same countries in view, so the same place can be read across five different measures in a few clicks — a country that is expensive for data is not always the one with the slowest network, and the fastest networks are rarely in the wealthiest passports.

Draw the trend before you see it

The guess-the-data game works on the same principle as an NYT-style you-draw-it chart. It reveals the first few years of a real, sourced series — then hands the pen over. Readers draw where they think the line went, hit reveal, and score how close their instinct landed. The gap is usually the surprise: the worldwide price of 1GB of mobile data fell from $8.18 in 2019 to $2.61 in 2023, a drop of roughly 68% that most people expect to flatten out but that kept going — before finally levelling off at $2.59 in the 2026 edition. Airline baggage mishandling fell from 18.9 mishandled bags per 1,000 passengers in 2007 to about 5.7 in 2018, and average airline-meal calories rose to a 405-calorie peak in 2017 before falling back. Each puzzle links to the report the figures came from.

Compare the numbers behind a headline

The full 1GB mobile-data world map holds the underlying table for 237 countries in one place, and the travel eSIM guide turns those connectivity figures into a plain, factual comparison of the plans a traveller can actually buy — on price and coverage, with no rankings dressed up as advice. Together the three tools move from the global picture down to a single practical decision.

• The 1GB mobile-data world map

  See the cost of a gigabyte of mobile data across 237 countries on one interactive map.

• Guess the data

  Guess where a travel figure lands, then reveal the real answer — statistics as a game.

• Travel eSIM comparison

  A plain, factual comparison of the main travel eSIM plans on price and coverage.

How the tools are sourced

Every dataset behind these tools is dated and cited to its original study rather than rounded into a single site-wide figure. Mobile-data prices come from Cable.co.uk's Worldwide Mobile Data Pricing study, passport power from the Henley Passport Index, and the Big Mac layer from The Economist's Big Mac Index; petrol prices and median mobile download speeds each carry their own reference date in the legend. Where a figure is an estimate rather than a direct measurement, the source report says so, and the tool passes that through. The aim is that any number a reader pulls from a map or a game can be checked against the study it came from in one click — the same standard applied to every report in the statistics archive.

Frequently asked questions