Human Population Growth

Friday 21 October 2011

7 billionth human

According to the article "When will the 7 billionth human baby be born?" in the New Scientist, the United Nations has made a statement that the human population will reach 7 billion on 31 October 2011.

The actual date is very approximative given the large degree of uncertainty in the counting of all the people on this planet. Census data certainly lags behind the real numbers even if at least 3% of the people are missed in the count.  The concept of uncertainty can be used with students in their data collection for internal assessments.  How much difference does a little uncertainty have on the validity of the results?  This article helps show the impact of the impreciseness of the data collection of human numbers.

Of course the actual date is not very critical but the rate at which human population is growing is a concern.  Different world population clocks can be veiwed to get numerous other statistics along with the countdown to 7 billion people.  

US Census Bureau World & US population clock shows only the population numbers for the US and the world but the site has lots of information about predicting population sizes.  

Worldometer clock has nearly 100 other statistics, including the number of cars, bicycles and computers made at any instance.  The number of emails, tweets, and google searchs gives an idea of what humans are actually doing.  There is also the countdown to 7 000 000 000 people.

Poodwaddle world clock also provides hundreds of other statistics, including numbers of deaths by various diseases and conditions along with the numbers of animals slaughtered for food.

So, the witching hour on 31 October has passed and the world population will continue to grow.  The Guardian has produced this "what was the population when you were born?" calculator to look backwards into your own past.  As I am rather advanced in age, born in November 1955 when the world had "only" 2,718,601,855 people, I can remember the news headlines for the 4th, 5th, 6th and now the 7th billionth person added to our planet. The calculator only goes back to January 1 1952 so if you are older, you will have to find another method!


Tags: population sigmoid topic5

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