NS Stats - Trends, Correlations, Anti-Correlations, Oh My!

[Valentine Z]

Good news! The new batch of data is here and in right now! Of course, I will still be going on with the old data first, and those 5 requests. Again, my sincere apologies - a combination of other things I am committed to on NS, as well as IRL stuff.

The new data has Food Quality and Patriotism, the new stats that are added, along with the usual flavors and surprises. Other than politics, everything else is inside as far as I am concerned. Causes of Death, Economy/Market Percentages, Govt. Expenditure, and of course, the Stats!

Data Obtained from All Nations - 2021-06-15 19:41:13, to 2021-06-18 08:00:00. 232271 nations × 228 columns. The API calls was within legal rate, though it's concerning that it did seem to indicate that I exceeded the API limit, but that was perhaps due to the way I calculate time elapsed. I don't know. Thankfully I didn't get embargoed out of using the API, which I should see a huge chunk of nations not being processed, minus CTE/DEAT.

Anyway, fluff aside, Requests are, as always, open. Please do feel free to make one! I also am active on Got Issues' Discord Server to put graphs now and then, but deeper analysis is made here.

I will do my very first one - Food Quality vs Health. It will come eventually after I am done with those 5.

[Valentine Z]

Requested by Betelgeuse Alliance, let us look at Compassion vs Economic Freedom! Will be still using the old data for the time being. ^^;

Linear-Linear, with Linear Regression Plot Y = -3.2221e-02 X + 4.1894e+01. The Root-Mean Square Error is 15.7166, the R-Squared Score is 0.0130411, both accurate to 6 significant figures.

And here are the rest as usual! Do pardon me for the log graphs not looking their very best, because I am still in the middle of solving why the linear thresholds are not working for me.

And here they are again, but on the Population Heatmap with three variants - Largest Nations Last, Smallest Nations Last, and Random Sortition and Addition of Data. This helps to convey a bit on where most large nations stand, as well as to see where the smaller nations are concentrated in.

Last but not least, the Density graph, which shows the concentration of most of the nations are in.

Which, kinda of says a lot that it would be the ones classified under Inoffensive Centrist Democracies (sort of), and the compassion values not exactly being the largest. Another implication is that it is not the extremes that has the most compassionate people. On both sides of Capitalist and Communist spectrum of Economic Freedom, the more compassionate seems to come from the left side of each of them, around the -75 zone, and the +30 zone in Economic Freedom. The most compassionate nations have a bit of degrees of being an outlier, perhaps because Compassion itself is a stat that you need commitment in answering issues.

Now for the more analytical bits!

X max and Y max: 0 - That is, no such nation that has maxed out both stats.
X min and Y min: 0 - No nation that has min-ed out both stats.
X max and Y min: 0 - Again, same. No maxed out Economic Freedom with min-ed out Compassion.
X min and Y max: 0 - And vice versa.
X max: 1743 - Which shows that there are A LOT of nations with +100 Economic Freedom, an implication that it is extremely easy to get.
X min: 341 - Same as +100 EF, but -100 EF this time, and it was either because it's not easy to get, or because it's not what players prefer.
Y max: 1 - Only one nation with maxed-out Compassion. Kindjal, of course! 529.62 at that time the data was gathered.
Y min: 1 - You did it, East Borland! You have some of the most heartless people!

High Economic Freedom (> 80.0), High Compassion (> 50.0): 32 nations out of 238851. These are nations that has laws that protects the economy and companies as much as possible. And yet, despite all of this, there is a lot of compassion at play, implying that donations are all-time high here. Hmm, what I would do to get those Generosity stat to come out of Beta. Another 4-5 days of trawling to do?

Low Economic Freedom (< -78.0), Low Compassion (< 20.6): 1066 nations out of 238851. And this is the opposite. Some of the most communist and socialist nations to ever exist, and yeah, not a lot of compassion going on in there. I am not doing the old and tired joke of how communists starve, so even without that, one can wonder why they are so miserable and heartless. Maybe it was due to people just not having a good time there? Maybe other freedoms are also just not around, which in turn might be contributors to "We are not the kindest folks around."

High Economic Freedom (> 80.0), Low Compassion (< 20.6): 22295 nations out of 238851.
Low Economic Freedom (< -78.0), High Compassion (> 50.0): 22578 nations out of 238851.
These two are kinda expected, in a way. if your nation has more protection towards companies and corporations, chances are pretty good that you might not have the best of compassion towards people in your heart. That is at least the interpretation that I get, without getting too politically charged; I am simply stating it here out of pure statistics and numbers.

And here are some of the deeper trends, with population involved:
High Economic Freedom, High Compassion, High Population: 14 nations
High Economic Freedom, High Compassion, Low Population: 0 nations

Low Economic Freedom, Low Compassion, High Population: 110 nations
Low Economic Freedom, Low Compassion, Low Population: 3 nations

High Economic Freedom, Low Compassion, High Population: 581 nations
High Economic Freedom, Low Compassion, Low Population: 1 nations

Low Economic Freedom, High Compassion, High Population: 412 nations
Low Economic Freedom, High Compassion, Low Population: 63 nations

A general trend that it is often the nations/players who have been here longer that has the higher/lower of either stats. Though of note that for all of these High/Low mentioned above, I did not use a fixed number, and it does not account for the middle values; these are respectively for the 10th and 90th Percentile, so chances are good that it might be less due to the impossibility of stats having these scores together, and maybe less of these nations choosing. Case in point:

[Bears Armed]

Low Economic Freedom (< -78.0), Low Compassion (< 20.6): 1066 nations out of 238851. And this is the opposite. Some of the most communist and socialist nations to ever exist, and yeah, not a lot of compassion going on in there. I am not doing the old and tired joke of how communists starve, so even without that, one can wonder why they are so miserable and heartless. Maybe it was due to people just not having a good time there? Maybe other freedoms are also just not around, which in turn might be contributors to "We are not the kindest folks around."

Maybe they've been thoroughly conditioned into believing that 'The State' will do any helping of others necessary, so they themselves don't need to do any?

[Valentine Z]

Low Economic Freedom (< -78.0), Low Compassion (< 20.6): 1066 nations out of 238851. And this is the opposite. Some of the most communist and socialist nations to ever exist, and yeah, not a lot of compassion going on in there. I am not doing the old and tired joke of how communists starve, so even without that, one can wonder why they are so miserable and heartless. Maybe it was due to people just not having a good time there? Maybe other freedoms are also just not around, which in turn might be contributors to "We are not the kindest folks around."

Maybe they've been thoroughly conditioned into believing that 'The State' will do any helping of others necessary, so they themselves don't need to do any?

Yeah, that is a valid point. ^^ The State will help, so why should I bother and all that, right? Hmm..... I am seeing another trend we could do.

Welfare vs Compassion?

[Valentine Z]

Welfare (Y) vs Economic Freedom (X) - Requested by Betelgeuse Alliance. Let's get started! ^^

So as always, we will have the Linear-Linear plot with the linear regression line, Y = -7.7637X + 1651.7416. The Root-Mean Square Error is 1,750.49, the R-Squared Score is 0.0582392, both accurate to 6 significant figures.

And of course, here are the other graphs with different axis scaling.

And here is the one with populations as the colormap, with three modes to make sure that the data is not poorly presented.

So these three separate graphs shows that largest populations can occupy anywhere on the graph because of the fact that they have more than enough time, while smaller / newer nations often ended up on the lower parts of the Welfare axis, and for the Economic Freedom axis, not a lot of nations tend to occupy the -25 to 0 space, not even the older nations.

Looking at the graphs and the analysis of said data, you can see that there is actually not a lot of difference in the magnitude of money invested on welfare by nations on both sides of the Economic Freedom. Some of the largest spenders tend to be in the -75 to -50 and 25 to 50 zone, and as Economic Freedom gets higher, the welfare tends to get a little smaller in terms of amount spent on it.

---

X max and Y max: 0
X min and Y min: 0
X max and Y min: 0
X min and Y max: 0
X max: 1743 (+100 Economic Freedom)
X min: 341 (-100 Economic Freedom)
Y max: 1
Y min: 1

High Economic Freedom (> 80.0), High Welfare (> 3110.02): 139 nations out of 238851. It is possible, and there does not seem to be a hard limit on whether or not your welfare spending can be high or low based on Economic Freedom. After all, you have the economic freedom, and perhaps due to the goodness of people alone, there are still nations that are hardcore capitalists, but with a safety net to make sure that those who fell are perked back up, and ensured that they are not abandoned and uncared for. Though at the same time, could it be "Corporate Welfare", that is, welfare that is only available for those who are working, and not from a nationwide program? Up to your interpretation!

Low Economic Freedom (< -78.0), Low Welfare (< -4.47): 234 nations out of 238851. Slightly more common than High EF and High Welfare, this is what happens when the nation is under a dictatorship, imagine that. Not a lot of say in how people can run their businesses and worse, there is little to no welfare to help those who are in really dire need. Whoever is in charge of the nation clearly does not have people's well-being in their thoughts. Or it could be that there are cheap insurances that Welfare is not needed? Again, it's up for interpretation!

High Economic Freedom (> 80.0), Low Welfare (< -4.47): 22190 nations out of 238851.
Low Economic Freedom (< -78.0), High Welfare (> 3110.02): 23394 nations out of 238851.
The most common cases of all, and highly typical - nations with good business freedom that does not have a welfare / safety net beneath them, and on the opposite end, nations with not a lot of business freedom that have welfare policies enforced on them. As we have seen above, neither one is typically superior over others, it just depends on how good the actual welfare is, or that if there are perhaps other means that people are getting this safety net from (e.g. very cheap insurance rates).

And here is when Population is considered:

High Economic Freedom, High Welfare, High Population: 115 nations
High Economic Freedom, High Welfare, Low Population: 1 nations

Low Economic Freedom, Low Welfare, High Population: 38 nations
Low Economic Freedom, Low Welfare, Low Population: 4 nations

High Economic Freedom, Low Welfare, High Population: 1731 nations
High Economic Freedom, Low Welfare, Low Population: 724 nations

Low Economic Freedom, High Welfare, High Population: 460 nations
Low Economic Freedom, High Welfare, Low Population: 3 nations

Which goes to show that Low Population nations don't really get High Welfare, because they need to work on it. This is more of a meta-explanation rather than an in-character one, because Welfare is a stats that you need working on.

-----

3 more trends to analyse and soon we shall be using the fresh new data! Well, it's already a week ago, but still, relatively new!

[Merconitonitopia]

High Economic Freedom (> 80.0), High Welfare (> 3110.02): 139 nations out of 238851. It is possible, and there does not seem to be a hard limit on whether or not your welfare spending can be high or low based on Economic Freedom. After all, you have the economic freedom, and perhaps due to the goodness of people alone, there are still nations that are hardcore capitalists, but with a safety net to make sure that those who fell are perked back up, and ensured that they are not abandoned and uncared for.

EF and taxes/spending aren't necessarily related. EF is mostly about government regulations on businesses. You can have perfect laissez-faire but tax the socks off your citizens. There are indeed some nations in the high EF category with 90-100% tax rates.
And while we're on that topic, I'm surprised to see you haven't done EF vs taxation.

X max: 1743 - Which shows that there are A LOT of nations with +100 Economic Freedom, an implication that it is extremely easy to get.

Speaking from experience, it's actually next to impossible without looking up issue results. The reason you have a lot of nations with 100 or 0 on the three freedoms is because you used to be able to mint nations that started out with those stats. I suspect that's over 90% of those nations.

[Valentine Z]

High Economic Freedom (> 80.0), High Welfare (> 3110.02): 139 nations out of 238851. It is possible, and there does not seem to be a hard limit on whether or not your welfare spending can be high or low based on Economic Freedom. After all, you have the economic freedom, and perhaps due to the goodness of people alone, there are still nations that are hardcore capitalists, but with a safety net to make sure that those who fell are perked back up, and ensured that they are not abandoned and uncared for.

EF and taxes/spending aren't necessarily related. EF is mostly about government regulations on businesses. You can have perfect laissez-faire but tax the socks off your citizens. There are indeed some nations in the high EF category with 90-100% tax rates.
And while we're on that topic, I'm surprised to see you haven't done EF vs taxation.

X max: 1743 - Which shows that there are A LOT of nations with +100 Economic Freedom, an implication that it is extremely easy to get.

Speaking from experience, it's actually next to impossible without looking up issue results. The reason you have a lot of nations with 100 or 0 on the three freedoms is because you used to be able to mint nations that started out with those stats. I suspect that's over 90% of those nations.

EF vs Taxation can definitely be done, so I will take this as a request and add it up later. ♥

As for the second point, that's actually a good point, yes! Newer nations, as of last week, are capping out at 97. Those who did not answer any issues, and got 100 EF, were the larger nations (like 15+ billion pop).

I suppose my correction was that it was easy to get "at that time" thanks to the way the mechanics work.

[Valentine Z]

As requested by Giovanniland, we now have Income Equality (Y) pitted against Economy (X). This one has a pretty pattern, let's put that out of the way!

Linear-Linear with Colormap and Linear Regression Y = -0.514X + 67.7148. The Root-Mean Square Error is 21.6608, the R-Squared Score is 0.276461, both accurate to 6 significant figures. As always, red areas are where a lot of nations are clustered towards, and pink being the least common.

Population Colormaps:

So, what are we looking at? The pattern is certainly interesting, and you can sort of see a piecewise linear equation of sorts going on here - it is not exactly the most linear, but the most common occurrences look like a bent straw, especially where the smallest population nations lie, indicating that this is where almost all the nations start off with. At that time, it would seem like new players are able to start anywhere from 0 to ~95 Economy, depending on what you have chosen for the questionnaire when you make a new nation. And of course, > 100 Economy is earned, not born with it, meaning new nations simply cannot get it from the start. On the other hand, new nations have little to no problem with choosing the starting Income Equality, extending from 0 (exclusive) to 100. There are straight lines everywhere, but they are also not neat lines and actually are all over the place. It would just seem that these are the starting points, or are nations that never answered a single issue.¹

Let us dive in further into the numbers:

X max and Y max: 0
X min and Y min: 0
X max and Y min: 0
X min and Y max: 0
As usual, you cannot seem to min-max either one, or both of them. Or at the very least, no nation seemed to have done a thing whereby Economy is at its minimum or maximum, and Income Equality being minimum or maximum.

X max: 1 - One nation with maxed out Economy. Northern Borland at it again, with their 109.06 Economy (as of that time).
X min: 1 - One nation with the lowest Economy. Gaiah with their -2.97 Economy.
Y max: 519
Y min: 96

High Economy (> 97.64), High Income Equality (> 72.28): 2355 nations out of 238851.
A relatively rare attribute, these are the nations where you can attribute them as having a very successful economy while also making sure (or just by very nature of the nation) that its people are looked after and have the money they need. Of course, of note is that Income Equality is Average Income of Rich divided by Average Income of Poor, so these are looking at the days when there is no Average Disposable Income (that stat was relatively new). That would be for another time. Here, this means that everyone is pretty rich, and they all have a fairly high income equality (the poor earns at least 72% of what the rich earns).

Low Economy (< 24.0), Low Income Equality (< 3.57): 14 nations out of 238851.
And here we have the polar opposite, which is an extremely rare occurrence, it would seem. Nations with imploded economy or with very, very poor people. I have also seen nations where even the rich earns 5-6 Monetary Units, which is saying a lot (or too little, in this case). Normally, low economy might see the thinning wealth being distributed, but here, such is not the case. A certain group of folks have certainly taken hold of whatever amount of money and economy they can find, and they took a lot of it. Perhaps an RL example of extremely poor third-world countries with a large wealth gap to show.

High Economy (> 97.64), Low Income Equality (< 3.57): 21505 nations out of 238851.
Low Economy (< 24.0), High Income Equality (> 72.28): 23384 nations out of 238851.
These are relatively normal, and a common occurrence out of the possibilities - as the economy prospers, some people might not be able to catch up or get their fair share of the wealth. And for the other, it would be what happened in the imploded economies as described above, BUT at least people are sharing, or are looking out for each other.

High Economy, High Income Equality, High Population: 599 nations
High Economy, High Income Equality, Low Population: 0 nations

Low Economy, Low Income Equality, High Population: 11 nations
Low Economy, Low Income Equality, Low Population: 0 nations

High Economy, Low Income Equality, High Population: 646 nations
High Economy, Low Income Equality, Low Population: 0 nations

Low Economy, High Income Equality, High Population: 1464 nations
Low Economy, High Income Equality, Low Population: 2889 nations

With Population taken into account, it would seem that only the 4th one is possible for new/starting nations. Again, Low Population means nations on the 10th Percentile, and High Population means nations on the 90th Percentile. Low Economy, Low Income Equality, Low Population seems possible, since there are only 11 old nations with Low Economy and Low Income Equality, so I cannot make a conclusion that this is not possible for new nations. For the other two, it does seem like you will need to go out of your way to earn them by answering issues.²

Addendum 1: I also forgot to add that the opposite applies on the Economy spectrum. It's one of those "You have to try to be this bad", but bad doesn't mean that you are playing horribly here. To get to the point, you really need to invest in answering issues, once again, to make sure that your Economy has tanked harder than 0 (less than 0), as you can see by the pink markers (denoting high population nations).

Addendum 2: I am actually itching so much to put a graph of "Number of Issues Answered" as the colormap, but I constantly feel bad that I put more effort into the next one than the previous one. You can see more and more features and in-depth analysis done to later stuff, which kinda made it seem like I didn't care as much for those who actually contributed earlier. That is definitely not the case, and I repeat that I can and will revisit trends to give them more attention that they deserve. The # of Issues Answered, as of now, I will put it starting with the 4th Edition.

[Valentine Z]

Three requests have been recently added! ♥ Also, yes, you are free to post your requests here and talk too, you are not breaking or interrupting my posts, and I don't have a thread ownership, anyway, haha! I have a Directory, anyway. ^^

Since I am relatively free after work, is it okay with you guys reading if I go at 1 analysis per day at fastest? I can't guarantee that I will be this regular, but I will try my best to ensure that it won't fall into pits of hiatus again.

[Bears Armed]

Since I am relatively free after work, is it okay with you guys reading if I go at 1 analysis per day at fastest? I can't guarantee that I will be this regular, but I will try my best to ensure that it won't fall into pits of hiatus again.

As you're a volunteer, rather than a conscript or under contract, we have no right to complain about your choice of speed: I, for one, am just grateful that you do this at all.

For the list of possibilities, just out of curiosity, how about comparing the two new stats against each other: Food Quality against Patriotism?

[Valentine Z]

Since I am relatively free after work, is it okay with you guys reading if I go at 1 analysis per day at fastest? I can't guarantee that I will be this regular, but I will try my best to ensure that it won't fall into pits of hiatus again.

As you're a volunteer, rather than a conscript or under contract, we have no right to complain about your choice of speed: I, for one, am just grateful that you do this at all.

For the list of possibilities, just out of curiosity, how about comparing the two new stats against each other: Food Quality against Patriotism?

Of course, that can be done! At the rate I am going, ahh... I can do a full analysis in 6 days! ^^

Mind you, the speed is not so much because it is slow, but I am afraid that it might be too fast. 24 hours (or less) and zoooom, we are moving on. Though please don't let this discourage you all from revisiting and checking out past trend analysis!

EDIT: Added into the queue. ♥

[Valentine Z]

While this was not exactly a request wayyyy back then, Silver Commonwealth's comment from back then got me inspired to do this trend, so here it is! This time, it's Black Market vs Population, so there is no need for Population heatmaps. Even better news is that the linear threshold for my log graphs are fixed, which you will see here later.

Linear-Linear, with Density Function as the heatmap. The Linear Correlation Line is Y = 1.8463e+04X - 1.4205e+13, The Root-Mean Square Error is 7.07054e+14, the R-Squared Score is 0.0244857, both accurate to 6 significant figures.

While the heatmap would not make a lot of sense on log graphs because of scaling, I decided to leave it in so that you can see where most nations lie.

Once again, it would seem like there is a bit of a linearity going on with the two stats, just not a single linear. Think of several lines fanning out, or several pellets going out of a shotgun, and that is how it looks like to me. As populations of nations get larger and larger, so will the black market... most of the time - other times they balloon out of control, and other times, even the largest of nations managed to keep their black market down, though there comes a point where they can no longer make it zero. From the Linear-Log graph, there also is a somewhat more solid green line starting from 2.0e10 (20 billion) population.

X max and Y max: 0 - No nations exist with Max Population and Black Market.
X min and Y min: 1 - The War Tribunal at that time - a combination of having 0 BM, and one of the newest made nations. They are now CTE as of this time of writing.
X max and Y min: 0 - No nations with Max Pop and Min BM.
X min and Y max: 0 - And vice versa.

X max: 1 - None other than Kyuppa, of course!
X min: 126 - Too many to count.
Y max: 1 - Bright Angel.
Y min: 26 - I hand-checked every single one of these nations. None of them has 0 BM anymore, with 100,000,000 (100 million) being the absolute lowest, which conforms with the Log-Log graph that your Black Market will only be 0 when your nation is at most 4 days old.

High Population (> 11,935,000,000), High Black Market (> 14,200,000,000,000): 5618 nations out of 238851.
The usual trend of "With large populations, comes larger black markets that the government cannot possibly stamp out." For these large nations, not only are the black markets around, but they are extremely prevalent. For most of the people there, it could very well be the only place where you can get anything. If you tie it with corruption, it will be no surprise to see even some government officials visiting and buying stuff from the black market. It does not have to be pandering illegal and dangerous items all the time. As per Wikipedia, "Four major underground economies can be identified: the illegal economy, the unreported economy, the unrecorded economy, the informal economy." It would make sense that there are times when it is "black market" solely because the nation became too big to be watched and accounted for by the government.

Low Population (< 56,000,000), Low Black Market (< 6,900,000,000): 17899 nations out of 238851.
High Population (> 11,935,000,000), Low Black Market (< 6,900,000,000): 18249 nations out of 238851.
On the other hand, regardless of population, these nations have managed to keep the Black Market down as low as possible. Again, several factors: There just wasn't any demand in the BM, because the government actually allows a lot of stuff to be bought and sold via official channels; could be also because the government is big enough to watch almost every single transaction.

Low Population (< 67,000,000), High Black Market (> 16,506,200,000,000): 5146 nations out of 232271.
Relatively the lowest occurrence, small nations with BM that is already spiraling out of control. Has the same traits as the ones with high populations, just smaller nations. Maybe the government just didn't care, or they were also in on the action. Or it was one of those small dictatorships with black markets operating in every corner of the street to get the people the things they want (or need).

[Valentine Z]

And so, it will end here using the third trawl of data, as we will soon move into using the 4th Batch of data! The one with Food Quality and Patriotism added in! #3-6: Economic Freedom vs Employment - Requested by Aurhany. Let's get started!

Density Graphs. Linear Regression line will go to the ones with Population this time, because I forgot to add that line and now I lost the temporary data to re-do it.

Population Graphs! I also made the population axis to be linear because it does seem to work in showing the more distinctive parts, at least to me. Please do let me know if you want to see the log scale for z-axis / colormaps again.

The Linear Regression line is Y = -2.6395e-02X + 6.7495e+01, the Root-Mean Square Error is 10.1090, the R-Squared Score is 0.0209831, both accurate to 6 significant figures.

From these graphs, we can see where a lot of nations tend to lie - either because of them being the most common coordinates that the nations stick to, or one of those nations that does not answer issues at all. You can also see the same line/curve with the largest populations residing there, indicating that this is where nations often start from if you answer the nation-creaking questionnaire in a certain way. Economic Freedom can be just about anywhere, but the extremes of Employment takes a bit of working to.

X max and Y max: 0
X min and Y min: 0
X max and Y min: 0
X min and Y max: 0

X max: 1743
X min: 341
Y max: 1 - Ral Ixshida with 99.910 Employment Rate!
Y min: 1 - Menta Lee-Il with 23.580 Employment Rate!

High Economic Freedom (> 80.00), Low Employment (< 51.37): 20710 nations out of 238851.
Low Economic Freedom (< -78.00), High Employment (> 76.47): 23033 nations out of 238851.
The usual and most common trends of having one adversely affecting another. For these nations, high economic freedom might mean that the companies are able to fire anyone on the spot for whatsoever reason, or that there are little to no laws protecting the employees. Maybe there is no union or anything to help them out. Then again, from what I have been told, Employment in NS Stats includes those that we typically not deem as being able to work - the elderly, the disabled, kids, etc. So maybe some of these nations simply have a lot of young kids, retired folks, and the like.

High Economic Freedom (> 80.00), High Employment (> 76.47): 1576 nations out of 238851.
This possibly might be the laws protecting the employees. While there is still the high amount of businesses and freedom that people enjoy, there are still oversights in check to make sure that people are not being treated unfairly in their respective companies. This might pair up with a small bit of sacrifice to the Economic Freedom, but not too much to drop them out of the High Economic Freedom zone. Either that, or these are the oddball nations that allow (or force, depending on how you look at it) kids to work too.

Low Economic Freedom (< -78.00), Low Employment (< 51.37): 632 nations out of 238851.
Nations that are either very particular on who gets into the workforce, or maybe it was a totalitarian dictatorship. Still, the latter would not make a lot of senses, considering that most dictatorships really likes its people (regardless of who) to work, so you should be seeing a lot of employment into the state-run businesses. As a result, I can perhaps conclude that this might be one of those not-dictatorships with just a bad freedom of economy (a Scandinavian Liberal Paradise, for instance. Or Democratic Socialists).

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With population accounted for,

High Economic Freedom, High Employment, High Population: 730 nations
High Economic Freedom, High Employment, Low Population: 147 nations

Low Economic Freedom, Low Employment, High Population: 116 nations
Low Economic Freedom, Low Employment, Low Population: 0 nations

High Economic Freedom, Low Employment, High Population: 24 nations
High Economic Freedom, Low Employment, Low Population: 0 nations

Low Economic Freedom, High Employment, High Population: 556 nations
Low Economic Freedom, High Employment, Low Population: 689 nations
This was perhaps the only one whereby there are more newer nations than older ones.

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And now with this done, we are going to move to the next data trawl! ♥

[Valentine Z]

Ahh, the smell of new data, new 2 stats, and new stuff to play with! Let's get started with Health against Food Quality, by yours truly. ♥

Linear-Linear, with Linear Regression Line as per usual. Y = 0.0811X + 1.0279, Root-Mean Square Error is 3.19348, the R-Squared Score is 0.625974, both accurate to 6 significant figures. With the relatively high R-squared score this time, there is quite a noticeable linear relationship. Not exactly the most linear of trends, but pretty high compared to the rest that we have seen.

Other scales:

And of course, the usual flavor of Population being the z-axis / colormap:

Ahh, and the new data - Number of Issues Answered!

This is particularly interesting. You can see that there is a general increase in Health as Food Quality rises, but when Food Quality gets into either extreme, the opposite effect happens with the Health - Healthy people with bad food, or not very healthy people even with the best food. As with Number of Issues Answered, as well as Population, we can also see that both Health and Food Quality needs commitment. Let's look at the exact numbers, and as to the possible reasons to why this is such a thing.

This is going to be pretty large:

X max and Y max: 0
X min and Y min: 0
X max and Y min: 0
X min and Y max: 0

X max: 1 - Tzo, with 922.10 Food Quality!
X min: 1 - East Borland, with 0.800 Food Quality!
Y max: 1 - Corsaria, with 124.51 Health!
Y min: 3 - Northern_borland, Nadir Dystopia, and Rindiania, tied for 0.200 Health!
Issues max: 1 - Chukstik Illahi with 8539 issues answered based on the matrices.
Issues min: 63168 - A whopping 60,000+ nation did not answer issues!
Pop max: 1 - Kyupaa!
Pop min: 130 - 130 new nations were made at that time of me trawling the data. Or at least, 130 new nations over the course of 4-5 days.

High Food Quality (> 95.69), High Health (> 8.85): 16907 nations out of 232271.
The expected effect of the best food available this side of the NS-verse, paired with people being super healthy. Ahh, nothing much to say for this one. More things will be said eventually!

Low Food Quality (< 7.15), Low Health (< 0.72): 11379 nations out of 232271.
The opposite effect of the previous case - with bad and awful food, comes unhealthy people. Maybe they have been eating very, very cheap junk food throughout their life.

High Food Quality (> 95.69), Low Health (< 0.72): 6076 nations out of 232271.
Ahh, now here is the opposite trend that is more interesting. High and good food, but still unhealthy people. How can this be, depends on several factors that I would like to anticipate on. Maybe they are still eating healthily as best as they can, but the country just happened to be a cesspit of radioactive waste that adversely affects health. Maybe people are not exercising and are eating unhealthy food. Food Quality does NOT necessarily mean junk food or healthy food; I like to think that it is simply a matter of whether or not the food is made with good quality ingredients, or are presentable in restaurants. Even food in restaurants can be unhealthy!¹

Low Food Quality (< 7.15), High Health (> 8.85): 11280 nations out of 232271.
And here, the opposite. One of these scenarios could be a militaristic nation whereby the food is bland - very awful MREs that not even your dog might have a good time eating (or if you do give it to your pets, that counts as a crime against humanity), but the people are still in tip-top position. Maybe the food is something they had to stomach down, but at the end of it, it is not really a big deal if they are pink with health and are exercising regularly! They could be eating mixed vegetable soup that is not exactly the best of food quality, but it sure is healthy.

High Food Quality (> 95.69), High Health (> 8.85), High Population (> 12,672,000,000): 3984 nations out of 232271.
High Food Quality (> 95.69), High Health (> 8.85), Low Population (< 67,000,000): 0 nations out of 232271.
Low Food Quality (< 7.15), Low Health (< 0.72), High Population (> 12,672,000,000): 1544 nations out of 232271.
Low Food Quality (< 7.15), Low Health (< 0.72), Low Population (< 67,000,000): 34 nations out of 232271.
High Food Quality (> 95.69), Low Health (< 0.72), High Population (> 12,672,000,000): 404 nations out of 232271.
High Food Quality (> 95.69), Low Health (< 0.72), Low Population (< 67,000,000): 0 nations out of 232271.
Low Food Quality (< 7.15), High Health (> 8.85), High Population (> 12,672,000,000): 199 nations out of 232271.
Low Food Quality (< 7.15), High Health (> 8.85), Low Population (< 67,000,000): 0 nations out of 232271.

High Food Quality (> 95.69), High Health (> 8.85), High Number Of Issues Answered (> 1,000): 5901 nations out of 232271.
High Food Quality (> 95.69), High Health (> 8.85), Low Number Of Issues Answered (< 100): 660 nations out of 232271.
Low Food Quality (< 7.15), Low Health (< 0.72), High Number Of Issues Answered (> 1,000): 2629 nations out of 232271.
Low Food Quality (< 7.15), Low Health (< 0.72), Low Number Of Issues Answered (< 100): 1127 nations out of 232271.
High Food Quality (> 95.69), Low Health (< 0.72), High Number Of Issues Answered (> 1,000): 581 nations out of 232271.
High Food Quality (> 95.69), Low Health (< 0.72), Low Number Of Issues Answered (< 100): 79 nations out of 232271.
Low Food Quality (< 7.15), High Health (> 8.85), High Number Of Issues Answered (> 1,000): 698 nations out of 232271.
Low Food Quality (< 7.15), High Health (> 8.85), Low Number Of Issues Answered (< 100): 34 nations out of 232271.

Which further reinforces that you need to commit to answering issues in order to get those numbers. I set a hard limit on Number of Issues Answered to < 100 and > 1000 respectively because of the sheer number of nations that did not answer issues that made it so that percentile is useless. The other values are still Top 10% and Bottom 10% respectively (including population).

Other tidbits:

Addendum.
1: As Bears Armed have mentioned, when only government healthcare is measured, this leads to problems on whether or not there also exists private healthcare. Sure, you can see the "Opposite of Public Healthcare Stat" but it's not the most accurate. For this reason, the Low Health could be also due to lack of accessible public healthcare, which sort of skewed things.

[Bears Armed]

Re the 'High Food Quality, Low Health' situation: Remember that the game only tracks government spending on healthcare, so far, ignoring the possibilities of effective free-market &/or charity-funded healthcare systems... Bears Armed is one of the nations placed in that section of the graph because of this limitation on the stat calculation.

[Valentine Z]

Re the 'High Food Quality, Low Health' situation: Remember that the game only tracks government spending on healthcare, so far, ignoring the possibilities of effective free-market &/or charity-funded healthcare systems... Bears Armed is one of the nations placed in that section of the graph because of this limitation on the stat calculation.

Aye! I do hope that the new industries that are in the works/talking point will help out with this. I mean... sure, there is "Industry: Insurance", but for now, one of the only ways to measure private healthcare is by seeing how big public healthcare is, which to be honest, is not the most accurate.

Negative Public Healthcare doesn't mean there is presence of Private Healthcare, in places where there is no healthcare at all. But not counting Private Healthcare to be a factor is also skewing things up.

[Trotterdam]

According to staff comments in the beta thread (Candlewhisper Archive's first post), Food Quality is more about taste than health. A couple of posters (Verdant Haven, Polis Diamonil criticized this definition, but since that never received an official staff response, it seems likely that it is still more-or-less accurate to the current version. The census description also mentions "ingredient quality, creativity, and diversity of food", of which only the first one sounds in any way relevant to health.

If anything, the correlation here is more than I'd expect given the official claims on how the score works.

It's entirely possible to have great-tasting food that isn't particularly healthy, or bland-tasting nutrient slurry that still contains everything your body needs to keep going.

The former is especially associated with so-called "junk food", but it can also apply to more gourmet dishes, such as, say, poisoning from improperly-prepared fugu.

The latter would certainly include the MREs you suggested. Armies may not always care about their soldiers' comfort, but they probably do prefer for their soldiers to not die before even coming within range of the enemy's guns.

What I'm actually seeing in your chart, though, is a surprisingly strong correlation between food quality and health, but with two relatively numerous secondary populations that ignore the primary trend: one of nations that have practically zero health regardless their food quality, and one of nations that have practically zero food quality regardless of their health. But only practically zero: there is a notable gap of nations that have low-but-not-pathetic values in one score, unless they also have low values in the other score.

An interesting tidbit I got from querying my own database is that on average, food quality is significantly higher for vegetarian nations (average 66.55 over 993 nations) that non-vegetarian nations (average 48.63 over 18408 nations), despite "diversity" being one of the criteria.

Might be worth comparing Food Quality against Obesity, too. Is the food so good that people are tempted to eat too much of it, or does its healthy nutrient balance actually limit obesity compared to trashier foods? Obesity is already known to be rather strongly correlated to Health in this game (perhaps too much so), but this is one area where you'd think that "succeeding" should have a downside...

(or if you do give it to your pets, that counts as a crime against humanity)

Surely your treatment of pets cannot be considered a crime against humanity, unless your pets happen to be human?

Re the 'High Food Quality, Low Health' situation: Remember that the game only tracks government spending on healthcare, so far, ignoring the possibilities of effective free-market &/or charity-funded healthcare systems... Bears Armed is one of the nations placed in that section of the graph because of this limitation on the stat calculation.

Health, at least in theory, tracks how healthy your citizens actually are, not how much heathcare they're getting. Low-healthcare nations can still be healthy if people simply never get sicknesses that would require them to be hospitalized in the first place (such as, say, if they're kept in top shape by healthy diets), and high-healthcare nations can still be unhealthy if the hospitals are incompetent wastes of money, or if the nation just has so many biohazards that even the best medicine struggles to keep up.

Of course, limitations in the simulation may mean that there is a disconnect between how healthy the game says your citizens are and how healthy you think they should be according to your choices, but it's still the best that the simulation has to offer at the moment. If private healthcare isn't incorporated into Health then it's not suddenly going to be incorporated into some other score like Food Quality.

[Valentine Z]

Aye, I'll look into Food Quality Vs Obesity in the queue. As for the pets and crimes against humanity, ahaha, wrong choice of words. Maybe more akin to just a crime of feeding your pets tasteless food.

[Valentine Z]

With inspiration from Merconitonitopia, now we have Taxation pitted against Economic Freedom! Again, please do pardon me for the lateness, I have been... very busy lately. Either busy, or sleepy, or both!

Let's get started with the usual graphs with the Density Function as the colormap, and for Linear-Linear, the regression line is Y = -0.2915X + 43.4007, Root-Mean Square Error is 20.512, the R-Squared Score is 0.391983, both accurate to 6 significant figures.

And then we have the population charts, all Linear-Linear, including Population itself!

Of course, the new measurement - Number of Issues Answered!

-----
X max and Y max: 0
X min and Y min: 0
X max and Y min: 0
X min and Y max: 0

X max: 1693 - too many with 100 EF.
X min: 360 - too many with -100 EF.
Y max: 1 - Kindjal, with 149.06% tax rate!
Y min: 1 - Cashdeer, with a whopping -871.09 tax rate!

-----
And now, the usual trends. Let's look at them!

High Economic Freedom (> 80.00), High Taxation (> 73.67): 32 nations out of 232271.
With free businesses, still comes huge taxation rates for these 32 nations. The second rarest occurrence, but it is there. Of interesting note is that there still does not seem to be a separate taxation rate between people and the government. It does say that "Although some nations have a flat tax rate for all citizens while others tax the rich more heavily than the poor, the World Census used averages to rank the world’s most taxing governments," I would think that some of these tax rates also goes towards businesses. It could be tax rates for corporations and businesses, maybe they are classified as "citizens". I mean, a CEO is a citizen, and he probably got taxed at 400% the normal rate of a normal citizen, and thus the averaging out. The government definitely wanted in on some of those revenue.

Low Economic Freedom (< -78.00), Low Taxation (< 7.02): 19 nations out of 232271.
And then, the opposite - governments that looked closely at people doing businesses, but at the same time, don't really tax their people. Maybe they already have more than enough money from the corporations. This is where I realised that this might contradict what I have said for High EF and High Taxes above. That is, can it be that the government did NOT tax the people, but only the corporations? That would

High Economic Freedom (> 80.00), Low Taxation (< 7.02): 21762 nations out of 232271.
Low Economic Freedom (< -78.00), High Taxation (> 73.67): 22999 nations out of 232271.
The usual. It would seem that with increasing economic freedom, the taxation rates from the government got a lot lower. Low to the point where there are payouts! That is at least my inference from negative tax rates - people constantly get payouts either from the government, or from the corporations/businesses that are there, given the EF. The the opposite happens whereby the government closely watches those in business sector, and will tax both them and the people harshly.

-----

I set a hard limit on Number of Issues Answered to < 100 and > 1000 respectively because of the sheer number of nations that did not answer issues that made it so that percentile is useless. The other values are still Top 10% and Bottom 10% respectively (including population).

High Economic Freedom (> 80.00), High Taxation (> 73.67), High Population (> 12,672,000,000): 14 nations out of 232271.
High Economic Freedom (> 80.00), High Taxation (> 73.67), High Number Of Issues Answered (> 1,000): 24 nations out of 232271.
High Economic Freedom (> 80.00), High Taxation (> 73.67), Low Population (< 67,000,000): 0 nations out of 232271.
High Economic Freedom (> 80.00), High Taxation (> 73.67), Low Number Of Issues Answered (< 100): 0 nations out of 232271.

You need to commit to get this trend!

Low Economic Freedom (< -78.00), Low Taxation (< 7.02), High Population (> 12,672,000,000): 16 nations out of 232271.
Low Economic Freedom (< -78.00), Low Taxation (< 7.02), Low Population (< 67,000,000): 0 nations out of 232271.
Low Economic Freedom (< -78.00), Low Taxation (< 7.02), High Number Of Issues Answered (> 1,000): 13 nations out of 232271.
Low Economic Freedom (< -78.00), Low Taxation (< 7.02), Low Number Of Issues Answered (< 100): 0 nations out of 232271.

Even if committed, you might not have a good chance at this.

High Economic Freedom (> 80.00), Low Taxation (< 7.02), High Population (> 12,672,000,000): 2032 nations out of 232271.
High Economic Freedom (> 80.00), Low Taxation (< 7.02), Low Population (< 67,000,000): 964 nations out of 232271.
High Economic Freedom (> 80.00), Low Taxation (< 7.02), High Number Of Issues Answered (> 1,000): 432 nations out of 232271.
High Economic Freedom (> 80.00), Low Taxation (< 7.02), Low Number Of Issues Answered (< 100): 0 nations out of 232271.

Even smaller nations can fall into this category, it's slightly easy.

Low Economic Freedom (< -78.00), High Taxation (> 73.67), High Population (> 12,672,000,000): 1001 nations out of 232271.
Low Economic Freedom (< -78.00), High Taxation (> 73.67), Low Population (< 67,000,000): 367 nations out of 232271.
Low Economic Freedom (< -78.00), High Taxation (> 73.67), High Number Of Issues Answered (> 1,000): 1708 nations out of 232271.
Low Economic Freedom (< -78.00), High Taxation (> 73.67), Low Number Of Issues Answered (< 100): 0 nations out of 232271.

Still easy to get for new nations or those that did not answer a lot of issues, but slightly harder than the previous. But still, you must answer issues, because high/low taxation is earned, not just obtained.

Significant edit to the issues answered trends, because I used the wrong data. Whoops.

[Trotterdam]

High economic freedom, high taxation would be "Al Capone's regret": so long as you pay proper taxes on your income, the government doesn't care where you made that income. Just don't get caught evading taxes, or else.

Low economic freedom, low taxation would then be the opposite. There's all sorts of stuff you're not allowed to do, but that doesn't mean the government does it for you, oh no. It just doesn't get done. These citizens probably suffer from a severe lack of basic services.

[Dabarastan]

Low economic freedom, low taxation would then be the opposite. There's all sorts of stuff you're not allowed to do, but that doesn't mean the government does it for you, oh no. It just doesn't get done. These citizens probably suffer from a severe lack of basic services.

I think the Dabarastanis are doing just fine, thank you very much.

In all seriousness, low-taxation/low-EF was easy for me to achieve with #490/1. Although I can't imagine my taxes will stay low for too much longer.

[Merconitonitopia]

High economic freedom, high taxation would be "Al Capone's regret": so long as you pay proper taxes on your income, the government doesn't care where you made that income. Just don't get caught evading taxes, or else.

Low economic freedom, low taxation would then be the opposite. There's all sorts of stuff you're not allowed to do, but that doesn't mean the government does it for you, oh no. It just doesn't get done. These citizens probably suffer from a severe lack of basic services.

High EF, high tax, is more or less the Nordic model: let the invisible hand work its magic so it can produce more wealth for you to shake out of it to feed a hungry, hungry government.
Low EF, low tax, would be something like a corrupt African dictatorship, ala Mobutu's Zaire, or more contemporarily, Zim or Ethiopia, with strong centralised control of the economy and draconian restrictions of business, and not a whole lot in the way of public services (perhaps because there's only so much you can tax the people without starving them). If you live in this sort of country, you should probably think about moving.

Low economic freedom, low taxation would then be the opposite. There's all sorts of stuff you're not allowed to do, but that doesn't mean the government does it for you, oh no. It just doesn't get done. These citizens probably suffer from a severe lack of basic services.

I think the Dabarastanis are doing just fine, thank you very much.

In all seriousness, low-taxation/low-EF was easy for me to achieve with #490/1. Although I can't imagine my taxes will stay low for too much longer.

Your nation's stat profile is delightfully unusual.

Again, please do pardon me for the lateness, I have been... very busy lately. Either busy, or sleepy, or both!

No need to apologise Val; we're not paying you for this.

[Trotterdam]

I think the Dabarastanis are doing just fine, thank you very much.

Hmm. Your Health, Scientific Advancement, and Environmental Beauty are pretty good, but your Cheerfulness, Compassion, and Integrity are all in the bottom 3%. (I kind of wonder on that Integrity - what can your government functionaries be embezzling on if there's no taxes? Maybe bribes are in fact the government's primary source of income?)

High EF, high tax, is more or less the Nordic model: let the invisible hand work its magic so it can produce more wealth for you to shake out of it to feed a hungry, hungry government.

Hmm, I don't think the Nordic model is high economic freedom. Rather it's an example of how low economic freedom can get while still falling short of actually banning private enterprise. At least Max Barry thinks so: the "Scandinavian Liberal Paradise" label is given to nations which have high civil rights, middling political rights, and low economic rights.

[Dabarastan]

Hmm. Your Health, Scientific Advancement, and Environmental Beauty are pretty good, but your Cheerfulness, Compassion, and Integrity are all in the bottom 3%. (I kind of wonder on that Integrity - what can your government functionaries be embezzling on if there's no taxes? Maybe bribes are in fact the government's primary source of income?)

I'd say that's about right. Also, I figure 3.5% income tax on a top 1% average income level is still a decent chunk of revenue. And a deeply corrupt government that one day decides to drastically cut income taxes doesn't get to just absolve itself of all of it's other preexisting corruption issues (we're still dripping in all the gold watches we bought with your taxes before the big cut).

[Land Without Shrimp]

I have another question on the Food Quality front. Fascinating seeing the Food Quality / Health data, as that was something I was wondering about! But what I'd really like to know now is...how does Culture/Food Quality compare? Seems to be quite strongly correlated from my observations, but would like to see what the data says!

Right now, I'm really struggling with seeing what bumps up food quality. Seems like it is increased more through secondary interactions than anything.