h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Some fascinating analysis by RF there, which will earn a bonus point or two, but sadly the answer isn't waterways, doctors, alcoholics or convicted priests.

Brazil: 47th, with 4,300 of these per million people
Canada: 17th with 21,700
Hungary: 28th, with 11,300

Icy

Nope, checked the maths again, still 24 people per wotsit. Or 0.0416 per person.

But the numbers vary wildly through the countries, so it can't be *too* common...

Also not too rare, though.

Let's see, people who (say they) play a musical instrument?

tourist attractions

You can't just turn that round as you please, Mala, and confuse a poor simpleton like me.

Sorry, neither musicians nor tourist attractions

Miles of road, with the UK top.

The UK has more miles of road than the USA? Or Russia?

Is it chirpy irritating boybands, with the People's Republic of Essex coming in top?

mile stones

Irish theme pubs?

Miles - or kM - of coastline / GB (rather than UK)

Good guess Bagpuss, but it's not miles of road , nor is it theme pubs , nor chirpy irritating boybands (is there another sort?), nor miles of coastline

The UK, perhaps surprisingly, comes in as low as 33rd on this list, with 8,300 of these per million people.

OK, let's accelerate this one:

You're slowly homing in on the solution, I think. The nearest so far has been ReddyFreddy's thinking in post 36.

These are the stats you know:

1. ?
2. Ireland: 41,600 per 1 million people
9. Italy: 30,100 pm
17. Canada: 21,700 pm
18. France: 20,800 pm
21. United States: 16,200 pm
28. Hungary: 11,200 pm
33. United Kingdom: 8,300 pm
47. Brazil: 4,300 pm
75. Mongolia: 1,700 pm
116. Nepal: 200 pm

Not on list: Vatican, Luxembourg

Shrines?

So which country would have the most shrines per capita?

Psycorp - I seem to recall a detail about the UK having an unusually high length of road per person. They're mostly little country lanes and not much use in dispersing our traffic jams.

So, the UK has about half a million of these. I'm stuck for ideas, but I'm tempted to take Icy's "good guess" as an indication we're looking at either transport or length of something.

India or Bangladesh?

Japan

Hi winternights, and welcome to h2g2, and the QI society

The answer isn't shrines, neither is India, Bangladesh nor Japan top of the list. The stats for those are:

Japan comes 23rd, with 15,900 of these per 1 million people
India comes 79th, with 1,400 pm
Bangladesh comes 130th, with less than 50 pm

But it can't be much of anything to do with the ocean, because some of those countries are landlocked.

Even Nepal has about 5 800 of them.

And though they seem to be "concentrated" in the Western world, they do seem to be distributed over the entire world.

Post boxes? Though that seems like an awful lot of them.

So which country would have the most postboxes per capita?