Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Peace Corps Odds

I was thinking of volunteering for the Peace Corps. I decided it would be worthwhile to calculate my odds of getting in. It turns out that there are 8,236 active peace corps members around the world. According to the CIA World Fact Book there are 298,444,215 people in the United State of America. This makes my odds 1 in 36,236.5. This is just from the general population, what about college graduates? Well according to the NSF there are 40,621,000 college graduates in the work force as of 2003. This makes my odds 1 in 4,932.13. Not quite as bad but it still doesn't look very good as this would only be a 0.020275% chance.

If I did get in where might I go? I ran the numbers and here's how it breaks down:

Active Volunteers: 8236

Pacific Islands (356): 4%
North Africa and the Middle East (253): 3%
Central America and Mexico (1061): 12%
South America (729): 8%
Eastern Europe and Central Asia (1637): 19%
Asia (444): 5%
Africa (3335): 40%
The Caribbean (421): 5%

So the odds of me going to Africa are 1 in 2.5.. Interesting, so I should start learning Arabic, Swahili, Yoruba or maybe I could just get by with French. Well, they do provide a language field, let's find out. Here is a table ranking the languages by total number of volunteers currently in a country that speaks that language.





























LanguageVolunteersPercentage
Spanish201924
English163719
French154918
Russian86010
Afrikaans7068
Zulu6698
Ndebele6117
Northern Sotho6117
Southern Sotho6117
Swazi6117
Tsonga6117
Tswana6117
Venda6117
Xhosa6117
Quechua4715
Hausa4265
Pulaar3834
Wolof3834
Ukrainian3714
Arabic3474
Kiswahili3454
Ewe3053
Mandinka2893
Romanian2823
Malagasy2623
Fulfulde2603


~2% (Gulmancema, Soninke, Mi`skito, Tamazight, Tashelheet
Portuguese, Bulgarian, Kaqchiquel, Kek'chi, Buli, Dagare, Dagbani, Dangme,
Fanté Ga, Gonja, Guruni, Kalenjin, Kasem, Kikuyu, Kusaal, Luo, Luyha, Mampruli, Moar, Nankam, Nzema, Sisaali, Taleni, Twi, Waale, Wassa, Jaxanke, Pulafuuta, Seereer)

~1% (Albanian, Bemba, Kaonde, Lunda, Nyanja, Tonga, Tumbuka, Guarani, Kyrgyz, Azerbaijani; also Russian in Baku, Bambara, Dogon, Khassonke, Malinke, Sonrai, Tagalog, Hungarian, Bamun, Bulu, Duala, Fang, Fe-Fe, Fulfudé, Ghom alà, Kako, Pidgin English, Tupuri, Antanosy, Bara, Betsimisaraka, Sakalava, Bassar, Cotocolis, Gourma, Ife (Ana), Kabiye, Komkonba, Moba, Tchamba, Tchokossi, Tem, English Creole, French Creole (Kweyol), Island Carib, Bissa, Dioula, Gourounssi, Jula, Lobiri, Kanuri, Zarma, Jola, Sarahule, Serrar, Kazakh, Guerze, Maninka, Pulafuta, Soussou, Patois, Western Caribbean, Adja, Bariba, Creole, Dendi, Ditemari, Fon, Goun, Gourmatche, Ife, Kotafon, Mina, Naténi, Yom, Yoruba (Nagot), Chinese (Mandarin), Macedonian, Mongolian, Romani, Thai, Oshik-wanyama, Oshindonga, Otji Herero, Rukwangali English, Hassynia, Bislama)

This is all based on a the data file here. The data file is used by the Flash application on this page to display the information on the map. It's all simple stuff from there.