So hey, congrats to all you non-male, non-Chinese folks who were worried about looking average! Because according to a decade’s worth of research by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing for National Geographic, a 28-year-old Han Chinese male is the mean. Numbers, explanation after the jump.

Now I mean the picture – a composite collage made up of 7,000 figures, each meant to represent one million people – plays around with the word ‘average’ a bit to be coherent; the mean global age is estimated at around 28%, but the rest is based on modal average. So the largest single chunk of the linguistic, ethnic and religious pie goes to Mandarin (13%), Han Chinese (19%) and Christian (33%), respectively. Beyond that, it’s just sort of an interesting way of presenting data. Slam-dunk, National Geographic.

Also, the world is apparently 82% literate, which you would know if you were reading this, I guess.

[The Face of Seven Billion]