Who will own this century (2)

I think we'll need a series of posts on this--let's see how much I can get through on a Friday night.

Nationmaster lists 22 countries with over 60 million people. I arbitrarily declare that the minimum for owning a century. Let's rank them on how they score on a set of criteria that I also arbitrarily declare to be the only, the crucial things that will matter (please tell me you understand that I am being ironic...)

Saturday morning. Well, this involved some preparation. The criteria I've chosen include some that are chosen to measure the physical base from which our eager contestants start this contest--population, GDP, etc. It also includes some that try to see which way they are facing--towards the future, the present or the past? Things like corruption and military spending help here. Then we try and look at capabilities for the future--life expectancy at birth, which measures so many different things that it should be a shrine at which we all worship regularly, university enrollment and graduation, etc.

This is specifically what I measured: Ranking on Nationmaster in population, GDP, life expectancy at birth, corruption index, military spending as percentage of GDP, enrollment in tertiary education as percentage of age eligible population, births per 1000 population.

These things are all measured and ranked on Nationmaster. I then perform the magic PESTLE calculations which contain the secret algorhythms designed to divine the destiny of organisations and companies the world over (ed. You mean you count their scores and low score wins? tf. er, yes).

Here are the countries of the future, ranked by potential to lead. Your actual mileage may vary.

Country                 Total
1. United States:             240
2. France:                       281
3. United Kingdom:         312
4. Japan:                        415
5. Germany:                   424
6. Turkey:                      457
7. India:                         464
8. Brazil:                        474
9. Mexico:                      497
10. China:                       512
11. Russia:                      522
12. Egypt:                       536
13. Thailand:                  541
14. Philippines:               568
15. Iran:                         571
16. Vietnam:                   587
17. Pakistan:                  604
18. Ethiopia:                   623
19. Indonesia:                 627
20. Bangladesh:               669
21. Dem Rep Congo:        701
22. Nigeria:                    702

Notice the mathematical precision and uniformity of the columns. Note also that in my previous post on this subject, I wasn't too far out when I just eyeballed the subject, but note also that my cultural point of view probably obscured the potential of Turkey and Mexico. That's why we do this.

If you want me to include other criteria, go to Nationmaster and look up a category and email me and I'll add it in and re-run the total. Or, if you want to check my work and do some of your own from scratch, here's the Excel worksheet I used: Download Who Will Own This Century

Analysis and interpretation in a later post.