Chart interpretation (June 3)

Younghee choi Tue Jun 03 2008, 21:37

Chart 1 shows the number of people using the Internet from 1995 to 2002. In 1995, there were 26 million people who used the Internet and the figure increased to 61 million in 1996. Only 7 million people were added in the following year. However, there was a sharp increase between 1997 and 1998 jumping to 160 million in 1998. In addition, the number rose up to 195 million in 1999. Surprisingly, the number became more than doubled in 2000. There are 552 million and 580 million Internet users in 2001 and 2002 respectively.

Chart 2 shows the geographical composition of Internet users in the world in 2003 using pie graph. 53% of Internet users lived in USA and Canada. People in Europe comprised nearly a quarter of the Internet population in the world. It was followed by Asian/Pacific consisting of 15%. 6% of the Internet users were from South America. Lastly, Middle East had the same 1% of Internet users as Africa.

Overall, the number of people using the Internet has increased steadily until 1999 and it showed a dramatic increase in 2000. The Internet population still grew steadily after that. In terms of geographical distribution of Internet users, more than half of the population was from North America. European Asian accounted for 24%. Both North American and European amounted to 77% of Internet users, which implies that a country's wealth has to do with Internet use of people.