Talk:Estimates of historical world population

message: The following text has been in and out of the article a number of times. I guess it may not belong in the article, but then I think it belongs here in the talk:
:Year 1950 of course means 1950 CE, but negative years can be interpreted in two different ways. The mathematically most meaningful interpretation is to let 0 represent year 1 BCE, and year -1000 represent 1001 BCE. A more straightforward interpretation is to let -1000 mean 1000 BCE, but then year 0 means nothing at all. In the table in the article, either interpretation may be used - the slight difference is irrelevant for our purposes. Similarly, -1 000 000 may mean 1 000 000 BCE, 1 000 001 BCE, or 1 000 000 BP (Before Present), i.e. about 998 000 BCE (writing around year 2000).
--Niels Ø (noe) (talk) 16:41, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Note on years 

message: That table itself is a good summary of original works by different researchers. It's much better to cite original works by Biraben (1979, 1980), Durand (1974), Haub (1995, Haub is a member of PRB and his estimates are already tabulated as PRB in this article), UN (1999, together with the esitmates after 1950 which are already tabulated in this article), and especially, McEvedy and Jones (1978).  I found that Thomlinson's work is just using older estimates by Carr-Saunders (1936) and UN Demographic Yearbooks and not the work to be cited here.
Kremer's estimates (1993) for the period from -10000 to 1900 are perfectly the same with the estimates by McEvedy & Jones (1978) and those for the period from 1920 to 1980 are those by the UN Statistical Yeabooks (1952 and 1985/6 editions) (actually referred in the article).  Kremer's estimates should be deleted.
I haven't read Ponting's book, but most (not all) of its estimates are the same with those by McEvedy & Jones (1978).  I suspect Ponting's estimates are rather to be deleted.
Also I think about.com's data are not the work to be cited here.  It is not clear who have estimated (maybe by Matt Rosenberg) and also estimates are similar to those by UN Census Bureau and those by Thomlinson.  (Maybe compiled based on the table of US Census Bureau.)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aurichalcum (talk • contribs) 08:16, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I compiled the original version of this table years ago from the sources I could easily find - Ponting in my bookshelf; the rest by googling. A more critical version, replacing secondary sources by primary ones, would certainly be an improvement. I think UN's values should be presented as such, even though they depend on other sources; stating such dependencies would be good too. - Go ahead if you have the konwledge and energy!--Noe (talk) 09:27, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi Aurichalcum, I'd like to say that I am very happy someone has taken a critical look at this article that I started a while ago. I'm no expert, but it looks as if you know what you are doing, and that the article is now in a much better shape. Thanks!--Noe (talk) 09:21, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

text: Could we please have a graph to show this frightening trend?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.120.68.22 (talk) 19:02, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: No, this page is merely a deposit for raw data from the cited sources; graphs and such should go on the main page, World population.--Noe (talk) 20:15, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why the historical estimates compiled by the US Census averaged? 

message: The column for Aubuchon (2014) appears to be estimates created by just some guy with his own website. The source given is http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/history/world-population-growth.htm, he says he gets his figures from "US Department of Commerce, plus other research. There are many estimates of population for various time periods. The reporting categories change over time, introducing discrepancies that must be resolved. I have selected the numbers which are the most consistent among experts in the demographics field." In other words this is just an ordinary person with no academic background who has compiled a list of estimates from other sources and "selected" the numbers which he thinks are the most "consistent". Here is the authors page about himself http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/author-bio.htm, now don't get me wrong I'm sure he's a very smart guy who has read books on the subject, but he is just not a legitimate source for Wikipedia (indeed in many other parts of his website he mostly uses information from Wikipedia). His list is just a personal estimate, not an academic, peer reviewed publication. So I really think that the Aubuchon (2014) column should be removed from the article. --Hibernian (talk) 17:11, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok no problem, thanks for removing them then. --Hibernian (talk) 19:16, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aubuchon (2014) 

message: I see that most yearly population estimates do not go back before 1950. I am researching for a project that aims to show the effect that WWII had on world population and world mortality rates. I am finding a lot of research that uses population estimates to determine WWII death counts on a country basis, but I am having trouble finding estimates that show a timeline of the world statistics during the war. Any ideas?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Neilhalloran (talk • contribs) 15:02, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  WWII and population estimates for 1935-1950? 

message: I was noticing the numbers for the Maddison Group (2010) study are totally out of whack with the numbers from any other study listed, with them reporting much lower numbers before around 1990 and much higher numbers after that point. If we extrapolate their numbers to the present, we'd get a world population of well over 8 billion, which I don't think anyone believes.
Is there any reason why we should be including them on this page? BeIsKr (talk) 16:57, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maddison Group out of whack 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: When will we see numbers for 2016, which now is more than 3/4 completed? MaynardClark (talk) 06:02, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Historical population beyond 2015

message: When will we see an essay or paragraph accounting for the differences in calculations or estimates on total world population at any particular year? MaynardClark (talk) 06:02, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Historical population estimate dissonance

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thread_title:  External links modified (January 2018) 

message: How many people do scientists hypothesise there were in Britain in 10,000BC? 2.101.4.2 (talk) 09:39, 6 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  History 

message: It might be a good idea to change Asia and Africa to other colors. - Gorba (talk) 05:29, 29 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  UN Estimates Pie chart 

message: Tanton (1994) is as a political piece penned by "an American ophthalmologist, white nationalist, and anti-immigration activist." Tanton incorrectly cites McEvedy & Jones (1978) for his AD 1 figure, seemingly misreading the X axis. It clearly was not meant to be a rigorous reference of historical population estimates. BarrowSys (talk) 21:04, 17 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tanton (1994)