Go Figure: Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know

Smart, savvy answers to universal questions, from the highly popular Economist Explains and Daily Chart blogs, a treat for the knowing, the uninitiated and the downright curious.

The news cycle moves fast, and as one story is swiftly replaced by another, underlying causes and bigger (and smaller) questions often go unexplored. That's when you need the two most popular blogs on The Economist's website: the Economist Explains and its online sister, the Daily Chart. Together, these online giants provide answers to the kinds of questions, quirky and serious, that may be puzzling anyone interested in the world around them. Want to know how a tattoo affects your job prospects, which James Bond drinks the most martinis, or how to make an invisibility cloak? We have the answers.

Go Figure brings together for the first time the very best explainers and charts, written and created by top journalists from around the world to help us understand such brain-bending conundrums as why so many Koreans are called Kim, how bitcoin mining works and why the amount of dog poo on the streets of New York is seasonal. Subjects both topical and timeless, profound and peculiar, are explained with The Economist's trademark wit and verve.

The results are sometimes surprising, often intriguing and always enlightening