Jakub Marian

English speakers are very creative when it comes to making up new words by combining parts of words that already exist. For example, most (...)

July 28, 2016 – Jakub Marian – English

Best countries to live in Europe, 2016 map

It is becoming more and more clear that GDP (gross domestic product) alone is not a good indicator of a country’s performance. For (...)

July 26, 2016 – Jakub Marian – Maps

The ‘day of the week boy or girl’ paradox explained

There is a well-known result in probability theory that seems to defy common sense. Note that in the problem statement we assume that the (...)

July 25, 2016 – Jakub Marian – Mathematics

Immigration in Europe: Map of the percentages and countries of origin of immigrants

Migration is a common phenomenon in Europe. The growth in the number of migrants has been even more pronounced after the formation of the (...)

July 18, 2016 – Jakub Marian – Maps

‘To my ear’ vs. ‘to my ears’ in English

If you are wondering whether you should say that something sounds “good to your ear” or “good to your ears”, rest assured that either (...)

July 17, 2016 – Jakub Marian – English

By the way, have you already seen my brand new web app for non-native speakers of English? It's based on reading texts and learning by having all meanings, pronunciations, grammar forms etc. easily accessible. It looks like this:

Country adjectives in English (map for European countries)

Each country name has a distinct adjectival form in English, which is used when speaking about something related to the country, e.g. (...)

July 10, 2016 – Jakub Marian – Maps

Is it “all the” or “all of the” in English?

A common mistake among non-native speakers is inappropriately using the word “of” after “all”. However, it would be wrong to say that this (...)

July 6, 2016 – Jakub Marian – English

“Drawing” pronounced as “drawring” in British English

Why is it that so many British people pronounce the word “drawing” as “drawring”? This non-standard pronunciation is the result of (...)

July 2, 2016 – Jakub Marian – English

How I show Crimea in my statistical maps

I have been getting a lot of comments and emails lately about “errors” in my maps, all about one particular part of the map. Whenever (...)

June 23, 2016 – Jakub Marian – Maps

Military expenditures per capita and as % of GDP in Europe

The following two maps show how much European countries spent on their military in 2015, per capita and as a percentage of GDP. The maps (...)

June 21, 2016 – Jakub Marian – Maps