That’s just the law of small countries (just made up that term). It’s easier for smaller entities to be an outlier. You’ll find about the same positive as negative ones, though.

If you were to split a large country such as the USA or China into parts with a third of a million people, chances are that, for any of these, there would be a parts that beats Iceland.

There may be exceptions such as the highest usage of hydro-power usage, as they have a rather unique geology. Vatican City won’t be beat on popes per km², either (it has just over two)

Remember the year Vatican city was the murder capital of the world by a large margin? It had 256 murders per 100,000 inhabitants [0].

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/g77wwj/oc_...

> Vatican City won’t be beat on popes per km², either (it has just over two)

Just over 4 actually. There are 2 popes in 0.49 km^2 so 4.1.

Depends on your definition of pope. There’s only one bishop of Rome/head of the Catholic Church in Vatican City. Benedict XVI now is ‘pope emeritus’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_in_the_Catholic_Church#...)

> It’s easier for smaller entities to be an outlier.

The Most Dangerous Equation

Ignorance of how sample size affects statistical variation has created havoc for nearly a millennium

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/91c1/f00095ca156ea39fe0f225...