presuming a population of 1,265,000,000 in 1850 and 1,656,000,000 in 1900 based off prb.org what would be the most likely accurate estimate for world population size be in 1880?
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5en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimates_of_historical_world_population – Tom Sol Nov 5 '20 at 17:18
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1Underneath the assumption of exponential growth (known to be reasonable during the 19th century), those two data points would be sufficient to (approximately) answer the question. – John Coleman Nov 5 '20 at 17:26
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1This is really a statistics question. – Spencer Nov 5 '20 at 19:12
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@Spencer - No. That's an historical question that could be answered using statistics. – Pere Nov 6 '20 at 23:40
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Simple linear interpolation would produce an estimate of 1,499,000,000.
1,265,000,000 +3/5*(1,656,000,000-1,265,000,000) = 1,499,600,000
Since we only have 4 significant figures in the input data, and an exponential curve is going to be a little under a straight line, we should round down the 6.
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1I get 1,487,000,000 when I do the exponential calculation, but it is hard to take such numbers seriously. – John Coleman Nov 5 '20 at 21:14
