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.
Chart 1 of 2 · Federal budget
How much US debt does the Federal Reserve own?
The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.
The Federal Reserve held $4.58 trillion of Treasury securities on October 28, 2026, compared with a peak of $5.77 trillion in May 2022. Its holdings jumped when it bought Treasuries to support the economy after the 2008 financial crisis and in the 2020 pandemic, when they more than doubled in two years, and fell as it let them run off from 2022. Each point is the last weekly figure of the month, including TIPS' inflation adjustment.
Questions to discuss
- In one sentence of your own, what does this chart show?
- Find the biggest change or difference in the chart. What might explain it?
- Who collected these numbers, and how recent are they? What else would you want to know before drawing a conclusion?
Source: Federal Reserve Bank of New York, System Open Market Account (SOMA) Holdings (The SOMA Holdings data is subject to the Terms of Use posted at newyorkfed.org. The New York Fed is not responsible for publication.) · Data as of Oct 28, 2026
Open the chart and its numbersChart 2 of 2 · World
How has the world's population grown since 1960?
The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.
The world had 8.22 billion people in 2025, about 2.7 times the 3.02 billion of 1960. It passed 8 billion in 2023. Figures are mid-year estimates from the United Nations, which revises them as new censuses come in.
How to read this chart
Each point is the number of people alive in the world in the middle of that year, estimated by the United Nations. The axis starts at zero, so the height of the line shows the true size. Look at how steep the line is to see how fast the population grew.
Questions to discuss
- Judging from the chart, about how many years did it take the world to add its most recent billion people?
- Is the line getting steeper or flatter in recent years? What does that tell you about the growth rate?
- These numbers are estimates that the UN revises. Why is it hard to count every person on Earth?
Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators: Population, total (CC BY 4.0 (credit the World Bank)) · Data as of Dec 31, 2025
Open the chart and its numbersTeachers: make your own chart assignment, or change this one. Free, no account needed.