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. How many food recalls are there each month?
  2. What share of people use the internet in each country?
  3. How fast has the world come online?

Chart 1 of 3 · Food and drug safety

How many food recalls are there each month?

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

The FDA classified 46 food recalls in September 2026. Since January 2025, the monthly count has ranged from 30 in May 2025 to 69 in October 2025. Each recall counts once, in the month of the weekly Enforcement Report where FDA first listed it, often weeks after the company announced it, so months with five weekly reports tend to count more. The month in progress is left off the chart; its newest recalls are listed below it. Meat, poultry and most egg products are USDA's to recall and aren't included.

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: U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Enforcement Reports (openFDA food recall data) (Public domain (U.S. government work); source U.S. Food and Drug Administration, openFDA) · Data as of Oct 28, 2026

Open the chart and its numbers

Chart 2 of 3 · 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?

Chart 3 of 3 · World

How fast has the world come online?

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

73.6% of the world's people used the internet in 2025, up from 15.6% in 2005, the first year the World Bank gives a world figure. It counts people who used the internet at least once in the previous three months. The world figures are estimates by the International Telecommunication Union.

How to read this chart

Each point is the share of the world's people who used the internet at least once in the previous three months, as estimated by the International Telecommunication Union. The axis starts at zero, so the height shows the true share. The steeper the line, the faster people were coming online.

Questions to discuss

  1. About what share of the world was online in the first year on the chart, and in the latest year?
  2. Did the share grow faster in some years than others? What could have sped it up?
  3. Using the internet once in three months counts here. What does this number leave out about how people get online?

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