Signum Average Data-driven journalism: questions in the news, answered with data and scientific methods. Every chart comes with its data. https://signumaverage.com/ 2026-10-11T00:00:00Z Signum Average Why Tokyo's cherry trees now bloom before Kagoshima's https://signumaverage.com/articles/cherry-blossom/ 2026-10-11T00:00:00Z Japan's cherry blossom is coming earlier almost everywhere. In the far south it has stopped, because the winters there are now too mild to wake the buds By Israel's own numbers, half of Gaza's ruins had no target and two in three of its dead were not fighters https://signumaverage.com/articles/gaza-building-damage/ 2026-10-08T00:00:00Z The army counts 65,000 targets struck and 24,000 combatants killed. Satellites count 134,000 buildings destroyed, and the health ministry 74,000 dead. The difference is a war Israel has never explained Does losing a game of chess make you lose the next one? https://signumaverage.com/articles/chess-tilt/ 2026-10-07T00:00:00Z Yes, a little. In 87m games of online chess, players who have just lost move faster, blunder more and score worse in the next game. But half of what chess players call "tilt" is only a bad evening Shut the border and white America still shrinks https://signumaverage.com/articles/america-in-2075/ 2026-10-05T00:00:00Z The "great replacement" theory blames immigration for the falling white share of America's population. A forecast for every state to 2075, with odds attached, finds that most of the fall would happen anyway, and that its size depends on who is counted as white Where the wine isn't https://signumaverage.com/articles/undiscovered-wine/ 2026-10-02T00:00:00Z Land fit for vineyards lies idle across Turkey, Ukraine, southern Russia and Iran. A world that drinks less wine every year is a hard place to plant it What sanctions cost Iranians https://signumaverage.com/articles/what-sanctions-cost-iranians/ 2026-09-29T00:00:00Z Twice in 15 years Iran's oil has been cut off, and each time households paid. Now it has stopped altogether. The record suggests what 2027 will bring