Evidence for that: Where do these numbers come from?

[rufuspollock]

Lots of great stats out there on the web and I often wonder where they come from ...

A place to record statements or claim where I'd like to see the underlying evidence.

Amount of Internet Traffic went from 2 TB in 1987 to 1.1ZB in 2017 (Nature 201* - plus data centre energy usage (added 12 Apr 2020)

NB: i've seen these kind of claims on the internet quite a bit ("information generation / transmission will be X Zetabyes by 2020 etc) and always wonder where they get these numbers since it is very hard to track.

In https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06610-y (found from https://www.sustainablewebmanifesto.com which cites it)

I looked in main citation https://www.mdpi.com/2078-1547/6/1/117 and couldn't see anything on traffic and could not see anything in the article itself. (aside: the citation just has energy use - and i'm also not certain about their methods re energy usage of data centres!)

320,000 people in britain are now homeless - Shelter - Nov 2018 (added: Jan 2 2019)

https://england.shelter.org.uk/media/press_releases/articles/320,000_people_in_britain_are_now_homeless,_as_numbers_keep_rising

Shelter launches urgent appeal after new report reveals homelessness crisis deepens in Britain.

Brand new analysis from Shelter reveals that 320,000 people are recorded as homeless, as numbers rise again. This figure lays bare the true scale of Britain’s worsening housing crisis, despite repeated government pledges to tackle the problem.

In the last year, the overall number increased by 13,000 people. This means one in every 200 people in Britain are homeless and sleeping on the streets or stuck in temporary accommodation, including hostels and B&Bs.

Comments:

• Mostly this looks very similar to the report they released in Nov 2017 (compare https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/08/one-in-every-200-people-in-uk-are-homeless-according-to-shelter and https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/nov/22/at-least-320000-homeless-people-in-britain-says-shelter)
• At first glance I thought homeless meant sleeping rough or similar. Reading the data appendix to the PR that actual number is ~5k vs ~320k they calculate (i.e. more than 50x smaller or 1 in 10k people are homeless). Including people in a single homeless hostel the numbers rise to around ~20k around 15x smaller than the headline figure.

Smart meters and carbon savings - Dec 2018

Source: Advert in the New Scientist

"If we all had a smart meter [in the UK] it would be like planting 10m trees every year until 2030"

Comment: no explicit source cited afaict

We spend 3 days a week on admin & only 2 on our actual role - 10 Dec 2016

Originally https://github.com/rufuspollock/evidence-for-that/issues/1

Research shows that each week we spend the equivalent of three work days on common tasks like emailing, scheduling and attending meetings and gathering information, and only two work days on the role we were hired for.

https://cloud.googleblog.com/2016/09/intelligent-tools-built-for-teams.html

Global Humanitarian Lab - 2018

https://globalhumanitarianlab.org/

• [At top of page] Accelerating Humanitarian Innovation by addressing common challenges to increase efficiency and impact for 135m people affected by disasters. [emphasis added]
• 98.6m affected by disasters since 2015
• 65.3m displaced worldwide [in same period or right now?]
• 0.01% of humanitarian funding allocated to innovation