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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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    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimates_of_historical_world_population
    – Tom Sol
    Nov 5 '20 at 17:18
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    Underneath 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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    This is really a statistics question.
    – Spencer
    Nov 5 '20 at 19:12
  • @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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    Darn, no MathJax in History SE.
    – Spencer
    Nov 5 '20 at 19:21
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    I 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

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