How many people....

Discussion in 'Random Thoughts' started by Piaf, Mar 25, 2008.

  1. Piaf

    Piaf Senior Member

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    ...have ever lived ?

    So its like around 6 billions now, right ? But in total - how many people have lived since year 1 till 2008 ?
    This question is stupid, but for some reason I've been thinking about this for like 2 days now.
    And yes, I am a weirdo.
    :leaving:
     
  2. Waking Life

    Waking Life Cool looking idiot

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    Every man dies. Not every man really lives.
     
  3. Boogabaah

    Boogabaah I am not here

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    i can't count that high.

    :leaving:
     
  4. Posthumous

    Posthumous Resident Smartass

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    I hear that ~80 billion homo sapiens have lived.
     
  5. lode

    lode Banned

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    I've heard 100 billion.
     
  6. Cate8

    Cate8 Senior Member

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    hmmm
     
  7. Piaf

    Piaf Senior Member

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    Dont get all philosophical now. It was just a simple question....In general - how many people existed till now ?
     
  8. Death

    Death Grim Reaper Lifetime Supporter

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    the population used to be really low. its increased exponentially.
     
  9. lode

    lode Banned

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    My favorite quote in that movie was "RaaaaaaahhHhhhhHHHHH!!!!!!!"
     
  10. lode

    lode Banned

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    Posthumous and I gave our scholarly opinions Piaf. Probably between 80 and 100 billion.

    Why so curious?
     
  11. Piaf

    Piaf Senior Member

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    I dunno...I hate it when I start thinking about something, and I cant find the answer. So I start obsessing on it and cant let go. I just had to know.Does that ever happen to you ?

    Thank you guys for your opinions. Sounds reasonable - between 80 and 100 billions.
     
  12. Posthumous

    Posthumous Resident Smartass

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    But she asked since year 1. Would have to take the limits of that integral to get an answer, but I don't know the equation. Must be in the form of e^x though.
     
  13. Waking Life

    Waking Life Cool looking idiot

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    well .... give or take.
     
  14. lode

    lode Banned

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    Oh, I was taking ever. Not since the year 1 CE.

    How Many People Have Ever Lived On Earth?
    Year Population Births per 1,000 Births Between Benchmarks
    50,000 B.C. 2 - -
    8000 B.C. 5,000,000 80 1,137,789,769
    1 A.D. 300,000,000 80 46,025,332,354
    1200 450,000,000 60 26,591,343,000
    1650 500,000,000 60 12,782,002,453
    1750 795,000,000 50 3,171,931,513
    1850 1,265,000,000 40 4,046,240,009
    1900 1,656,000,000 40 2,900,237,856
    1950 2,516,000,000 31-38 3,390,198,215
    1995 5,760,000,000 31 5,427,305,000
    2002 6,215,000,000 23 983,987,500

    Number who have ever been born 106,456,367,669
    World population in mid-2002 6,215,000,000
    Percent of those ever born who are living in 2002 5.8

    From Population Bureau Estimates.
     
  15. crummyrummy

    crummyrummy Brew Your Own Beer Lifetime Supporter

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    [size=+2]How many people have ever lived? Keyfitz's calculation updated[/size]
    [size=+2](done June 18, 1999)[/size]
    This work was done at the request of Prof. Glen Paige
    for his new book, "Non-killing Political Science"[size=+2][/size]

    A simple model of population growth is the exponential model where the population at time t, P(t), is given by Cert for some appropriate constants C and r. This model is broadly accurate, especially when an organism invades a new ecological niche and the environment seems to have infinite capacity for growth. This model accurately describes the initial growth of a bacterial culture in a fresh dish of growth medium, or the human population as it discovered agriculture. More refined models are needed as environmental and predatory constraints impinge, but this model works well with most human populations because many human populations rapidly shift from one environmental disequilibrium to another (and thus present a moving target that the environmental constraints fail to effectively constrain). It is of course never that simple: Black Death in Europe caused populations to drop dramatically for a few centuries.

    Regardless of how one models P(t), the population at time t, P(t) may be used to estimate the total number of humans that have lived in a given time period. From a time A to a later time B, the integral of P(t) on [A,B] gives the total number of person-years for that time interval. If one has an estimate of the average lifespan, say 25 years as in Keyfitz's work, the number of people who lived from time A to time B is approximately (1/25) of the integral of P(t) on the [A,B].

    Keyfitz assumed that exponential growth occured in various historical time intervals [A, B], but with possibly different constants C and r for each time interval. He chose C and r to match given values of P(t) at A and B. This requires solving two equations in 2 unknowns:
    • P(A)=C erA
    • P(B)=C erB
    By standard algebra, P(B)/P(A)=er(B-A) and hence r={Ln[P(B)]-Ln[P(A)]}/(B-A). Once r is known, C is obtained immediately from C=P(A)e-rA. Note that Ln is the natural logarithm, the logarithm to the base e.

    Keyfitz then integrates Cert on the interval [A,B]. An anti-derivative is (C/r)ert and the definite integral is the anti-derivative at B minus the anti-derivative at A. The total person-years from A to B is (C/r)[erB-erA]. By algebra, this is equal to (1/r)[P(B)-P(A)]. By substituting the value of r described just above,

    the total person-years from A to B is [P(B)-P(A)](B-A)/{Ln[P(B)]-Ln[P(A)]}.This formula is now applied to a system of time intervals from 1,000,000 BC to the present. The sum of the total person-years for all these intervals gives the total person-years for all human life. By dividing by the average lifespan, one obtains an estimate of how many people have ever lived. The data at ends of intervals are taken from a recent textbook on population, except for the first data point of 2 people at -1,000,000. That data point was proposed by Keyfitz.
    YearPeoplePeople-Years Since
    Previous Data Point-1000,00020
    -90007,500,0004.91* 10110300,000,0007.14 * 10111650507,500,0006.51 * 10111750795,000,0006.41 * 10101800969,000,0004.40 * 101018501,265,000,0005.55 * 101019001,656,000,0007.26 * 101019502,513,000,0001.027 * 101119603,027,000,0002.76 * 101019703,678,000,0003.34 * 101019804,415,000,0004.04 * 101019905,275,000,0004.83 * 101020006,199,000,0005.72 * 1010 The total of the entries of the last column is about 2,402 billion person-years (2,402,000,000,000). If one divides by 25 as an estimate of average lifespan, one estimates that 96,100,000,000 people have lived on the earth.


    http://www.math.hawaii.edu/~ramsey/People.html
     
  16. Piaf

    Piaf Senior Member

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    Thank you all so much !!!!! Especially crummyrummy...Now I can move on !!!!!
     
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