But often, if you know where and how to search, the answers can be found without an excess of work. This week’s Challenge is an example of exactly this idea.

If you spend more than 5 minutes on this Challenge, you should stop and think to yourself: How else can I solve this Challenge? Once you figure out the method, you’ll see why I’ve posted this particular Challenge, and you’ll have yet another arrow in your quiver of SearchResearch skills.

Here you go. When you figure these out, please post your answers in the Comments. Be sure to say HOW you found the answers.

A whale shark with swimmer for comparison. (Photo credit to Heather Traher.)

1. Can you create a chart showing the difference in the populations between North and South Korea since 1970? (Just a simple line graph would be fine, thanks.)

2. Can you compute the market cap, total revenue, and number of outstanding shares for each of the companies IBM, Apple, Google, and Xerox?

3. Having recently dived in the Caribbean, I’m really interested in whale sharks. Can you quickly compare blue whales, gray whales, sperm whales, and whale sharks in terms of (a) lifespan, (b) maximum length, (c) weight? (Just the facts, ma’am.)

As I said, this really is a 5 minute Challenge. Do you know a method to make your searches that quick and effective for this kinds of data collection / comparison?

Search on!