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Posted

Its just an approximate calculation on the site which is popular for its novelty value - i.e. assigning a unique number at which you were born. The numbers should obviously be taken with a pinch of salt

Posted
Your math fail is notwithstanding, this whole site is scam/fraud. And I am surprised so many supposedly educated people have fallen for it. How the hell somebody can tell how many homosapiens were born on earth before me. Hell, we can't even say, exactly how many years ago first mankind was born on earth, forget about how many. I had never thought that this thread would have so many responses :hysterical:
:blink:
Posted
Your math fail is notwithstanding, this whole site is scam/fraud. And I am surprised so many supposedly educated people have fallen for it. How the hell somebody can tell how many homosapiens were born on earth before me. Hell, we can't even say, exactly how many years ago first mankind was born on earth, forget about how many.
Of course, the exact numbers are sophistry and I don't think anyone is 'faling' for it. The exact numbers are just being shown to make things more palatable and appealing. However, under the 'assumption' that human population started at some 'X' years, it is possible to draw an order of magnitude estimate for the total number, even to get some error bounds by varying when Homo Sapiens first originated. The thing which works in favor of the analysis is that an error at the tail end of the distribution is not going to impact your final result by much because most of the weight in the distribution is coming from the last 1000-2000 years for which we have reasonably good population estimates. For example, if the numbers fails to take into account ten huge settlements around 5000 years back with a population of, being generous here, 50,000, what impact does it have? Practically none. All this is of course assuming no mass extinctions of humans, for which there is no proof. It's not as crazy a notion as you think.
Posted
Of course, the exact numbers are sophistry and I don't think anyone is 'faling' for it. The exact numbers are just being shown to make things more palatable and appealing. However, under the 'assumption' that human population started at some 'X' years, it is possible to draw an order of magnitude estimate for the total number, even to get some error bounds by varying when Homo Sapiens first originated. The thing which works in favor of the analysis is that an error at the tail end of the distribution is not going to impact your final result by much because most of the weight in the distribution is coming from the last 1000-2000 years for which we have reasonably good population estimates. For example, if the numbers fails to take into account ten huge settlements around 5000 years back with a population of, being generous here, 50,000, what impact does it have? Practically none. All this is of course assuming no mass extinctions of humans, for which there is no proof. It's not as crazy a notion as you think.
Highlighted one is very good point which I had not considered at all. But still estimates being shown or this site are way off from other more accepted estimates for total number of humans ever lived on earth. Most accepted estimates are between 105-110 Billion. But this site is showing only 83 Billion, which is kind of an error of 20-25%.
Posted
Of course, the exact numbers are sophistry and I don't think anyone is 'faling' for it. The exact numbers are just being shown to make things more palatable and appealing. However, under the 'assumption' that human population started at some 'X' years, it is possible to draw an order of magnitude estimate for the total number, even to get some error bounds by varying when Homo Sapiens first originated. The thing which works in favor of the analysis is that an error at the tail end of the distribution is not going to impact your final result by much because most of the weight in the distribution is coming from the last 1000-2000 years for which we have reasonably good population estimates. For example, if the numbers fails to take into account ten huge settlements around 5000 years back with a population of, being generous here, 50,000, what impact does it have? Practically none. All this is of course assuming no mass extinctions of humans, for which there is no proof. It's not as crazy a notion as you think.
Highlighted one is very good point which I had not considered at all. But still estimates being shown or this site are way off from other more accepted estimates for total number of humans ever lived on earth. Most accepted estimates are between 105-110 Billion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Number_of_humans_who_have_ever_lived (section 11) But this site is showing only 83 Billion, which is kind of an error of 20-25%.
Posted
Highlighted one is very good point which I had not considered at all. But still estimates being shown or this site are way off from other more accepted estimates for total number of humans ever lived on earth. Most accepted estimates are between 105-110 Billion. But this site is showing only 83 Billion, which is kind of an error of 20-25%.
:cantstop: How many people have ever lived on earth - by Carl Haub http://www.prb.org/Articles/2002/HowManyPeopleHaveEverLivedonEarth.aspx [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WTctr5kviA]How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth? - YouTube[/ame]
Posted

Yes, I finally got around figuring out why this site is a fraud. This is what I was thinking the other day too, but I got confused. Take mine and Sidhoni's example (he's born after me). 80,583,511,282 were born b4 him. A 5,435,730,546-Population of the World when he was born. B 79,844,377,069 people were born before me C 4,962,686,258 - Population of the world when I was born. D A - C is the number of people born between the time I was born and he was born = 739134213 B - D is the difference in population of the earth between the times we were born. = 473044288 How can the latter difference be bigger than the former, as the latter difference accounts for deaths also. It should be the other way around? I'm thinking right or I've made a mistake?

Posted
Yes, I finally got around figuring out why this site is a fraud. This is what I was thinking the other day too, but I got confused. Take mine and Sidhoni's example (he's born after me). 80,583,511,282 were born b4 him. A 5,435,730,546-Population of the World when he was born. B 79,844,377,069 people were born before me C 4,962,686,258 - Population of the world when I was born. D A - C is the number of people born between the time I was born and he was born = 739134213 B - D is the difference in population of the earth between the times we were born. = 473044288 How can the latter difference be bigger than the former, as the latter difference accounts for deaths also. It should be the other way around? I'm thinking right or I've made a mistake?
How is latter (473044288) bigger than former (739134213)?
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