Chart assignment

Charts to read and discuss

Read each chart, then answer its questions. Every chart shows its source and date; open it for a table of the numbers and the data to download.

  1. What are the closest asteroid flybys ever recorded?
  2. What share of people use the internet in each country?

Chart 1 of 2 · Space

What are the closest asteroid flybys ever recorded?

The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.

As of November 2026, the closest known asteroid flyby was 2025 UC11 (Oct 30, 2025), about 228 km above Earth's surface; the International Space Station orbits about 400 km up. The 15 flybys here were by small rocks, roughly 1 to 10 meters across, and nearly all are recent, because only modern surveys can spot rocks that small. JPL measures from Earth's center, so the chart subtracts Earth's average radius (6,371 km); asteroids that hit Earth aren't counted.

Questions to discuss

  1. In one sentence of your own, what does this chart show?
  2. Find the biggest change or difference in the chart. What might explain it?
  3. Who collected these numbers, and how recent are they? What else would you want to know before drawing a conclusion?

Source: NASA/JPL Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), SBDB Close Approach Data (Public domain (NASA data); credit NASA/JPL-Caltech CNEOS) · Data as of Nov 4, 2026

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Chart 2 of 2 · World

What share of people use the internet in each country?

The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.

In 2024, 94.7% of people in the United States used the internet and 64.9% in India. The highest share was 100%, and the lowest 8.6%, in Burundi. 182 countries and territories had a 2024 figure. It counts people who used the internet at least once in the previous three months; places without a 2024 figure are left out.

How to read this chart

Each bar is the share of a country's people who used the internet in the previous three months. The dashed line is the whole world. The chart opens on the top and bottom of the ranking; search for a country to find its bar among the rest.

Questions to discuss

  1. Find the United States and one country on another continent. How far apart are their shares?
  2. What do the countries at the bottom of the ranking have in common? What might keep people there offline?
  3. The world figure is closer to the bottom than many rich countries are to the top. Why might that be?

Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators: Individuals using the Internet (% of population) (CC BY 4.0 (credit the World Bank)) · Data as of Dec 31, 2024

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