this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2025
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Mildly Interesting
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there's confusing and contradicting language there but it seems to be based on US data.
here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_human_height_by_country
... populations of China and India alone are around 170cm on average. I'm too lazy to do the math for the entire world but the two most populous countries by far is a good indicator that the world average should be lower
here https://health.howstuffworks.com/human-body/average-height-for-men.htm
it says the world average is about 171cm
The source I am using has options for 'The World' and over 100 countries.
They have a whole section summarzing their data sets, if you scroll down.
In the gigacalculator dataset, the US and World populations do not have the same mean, which indicates they are differentiating between them.
If you are too lazy to do the math yourself, you have no grounds to criticize the source I am using, who are themselves using many, many datasets, who actually have done the math.
Your source, howstuffworks, says its about 171cm, but they also say this varies widely, and the source they use, worlddata.info, does not actually provide a 171cm global mean adult male height anywhere.
Go, click the about to get to howstuffworks' source. There are no given global means at all, they are per country and region.