Who are the most beautiful pornstars

Given the task of matching porn stars, entrepreneurs and fast Wi-Fi to the three nations of Lithuania, Hungary and Uganda, one would be forgiven for scratching their head.

But not if you had data journalist and information designer David McCandless’s map of the world in front of you (see the map in full size here), which links every country on Earth to what it's supposedly best at (just so you know, Lithuania - Wi-Fi; Uganda - entrepreneurs; and Hungary - pornstars).

McCandless, who is behind the website Information is Beautiful, spent three weeks scouring a variety of data sources, from the World Bank and UN to the media and CIA, to assess what item, characteristic or incident is best-linked to a particular country. The results produced the International Number Ones map.

McCandless explains how some of the world’s smaller countries are excluded, and that the most interesting or entertaining options are selected from the multiple options that turn up for each nation - with alternatives kept in the datasheet.

“We tried to have really good quality sources for each entry,” he told the Independent.

“But we bent our own ‘Information is beautiful’ rules a little to include the occasional lower quality secondary source just to try to hit our goal and find something for every country. It’s meant as a light-hearted graphic.”

The map yielded some rather unexpected results, not least that the UK’s best association is with “billionaires”, of which Britain is only thought to have 50, while Russia is closest linked to “dashcams”, Pakistan “gay porn”, Vietnam “pepper”, Cuba “doctors”, Honduras “murder”, and Spain “LGBT tolerance”. The US is most closely associated with “spam emails”, according to the map.

The selections are broken down into nine differently coloured categories, including commodity, ecology and humanity, as well as the black-shaded “nasty” label, which counts among its wearers Namibia’s link to “car crashes”, Australia's to “cyber security incidents” and Georgia’s to “homophobes”.

“One anomaly was Bolivia being ranked as the best for Brazil nuts,” said McCandless.

The map is reminiscent of experiments that use the Google search auto-complete tool to assess the world, when a location is typed into the search engine followed by “is…” and the most popular phrases or comments pop up below.

Yulia Tymoshenko, the prime minister of Ukraine, has been chosen the hottest world leader by the creators of hottestheadsofstate.wordpress.com. On the female side, Tymoshenko, 49, edged out Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the president of Argentina. Among men, first place went to Jens Stoltenberg, the prime minister of Norway, with the King of Bhutan, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, close behind. At the other end of the list, in places 169-172, were Cuban president Raúl Castro, Hamad bin Khalifa, the emir of Qatar, Pope Benedict XVI and North Korea's dictator, Kim Jong-il.