| How Iceland Football National Team Was Selected:
Total inhabitants = 332,529 Women ....................................... -165,259 Men <18 years old ........................... -40,546 Overweight .................................. -22,136 Busy in whale sightseeing industry........... -1,246 Busy in earthquake surveillance.............. -314 Busy in volcano surveillance................. -164 Busy as sheepherders......................... -1,934 Busy sheep shearing.......................... -1,464 Imprisoned bankers........................... -23 Blind........................................ -194 Sick......................................... -7,564 Working in hospitals, police, fire brigade... -564 Icelandic fans in stadium.................... -8,781 Team doctor and physiotherapist.............. -2 Teams massage therapist and water carrier.... -2 Busy managing national football team......... -7 Rest......................................... 23 https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/4psdbh/how_the_icel... |
You missed the punch line!
As an aside, obviously, those numbers are obviously cherry-picked, but they appear to be mostly selected based on facts. You can find some census figures in this booklet: http://www.statice.is/media/49863/icelandinfigures2016.pdf (The booklet says that of 111k men, 2.6% (or about 2900) are involved in the sum of all non-aquatic agricultural activities; I couldn't find precise details on sheep farming.) Nonetheless, I'm particularly curious about the listed ratio of sheepherders (shepherds?) to sheep shearers, at 1,934 vs. 1,464
The numbers seem to imply that sheep shearing takes 75% as long as sheep herding. I imagined that one sheep shearer would have sufficient capacity to service a large number of shepherds. Each sheep is typically sheared once per year, and it might take two or three minutes per sheep. But the shepherd must manage the sheep year round. Even with modern automated feeding equipment, farm tractors, and, of course, the requisite sheepdogs, I can't imagine that one shepherd could generate nearly enough sheep to keep a shearer busy for 9 months per year. Even assuming the shearer requires 5 minutes per sheep and only does shearing 30 hours per week for 4 weeks per month, that's 13,000 sheep per shepherd.
The same answer illuminates a couple things about our industries, too: If a task only needs to be performed a couple times a year, a freelancer will need many, many clients! And conversely, if you can automate or outsource day-to-day operations, you can get a lot more done than if you have to process everything manually!