Talk:Center of population

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I recommend that this article is combined with the that of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_center_of_U.S._population

Strongly disagree! There are centers of population around the world that are not US-centric. -- Brhaspati\talk/contribs 14:25, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Center of world population

I am removing the following statement "The centre of world population is in the extreme north of the Indian subcontinent.", because there is no culture-neutral way to determine the borders of the map. 2D maps only work for a territory that does not curve back on itself; we could consider most countries, even continents without taking the curvature of the Earth into account, but we can not examine the Earth as a whole. If we use the map currently seen in Western Europe and the Americas, the Atlantic is in the middle, and the population centre could be in India; older maps in North America put the Americas in the centre, splitting Eurasia, meaning there would be a different centre of population, as all 2.5 billion people living in Asia would be on the extreme left of the map, but all 500 mio. people in Europe would be on the extreme right. The map currently used in much of Asia, however, I believe places Japan/the Pacific in the middle, meaning there would be a third set of borders, and a third population centre. samwaltz (talk) 20:42, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm reinstating the "Center of world population" section, as it is a very natural question to ask on this topic. There is indeed a culturally neutral way to determine it, which was described in the reference that was listed in the earlier version of the section before it was deleted. Essentially, the question to ask is "What is the point on the surface of the Earth whose average distance to all the people on Earth is the smallest?", or, more loosely, "What place on Earth is closest to everybody on average?". Keep in mind that the answer deals only with the globe, and not with a two-dimensional projection of the Earth's surface. As a result, the answer is independent of which projection is used or where it is centered. There are however a few caveats: one may get slightly different answers depending on both the data and the method. The granularity of the data is important: using country-wide totals will give different answers from region-wide or city-wide totals. The distance metric used is also important: using a geodesic distance along the surface will give different answers from a Euclidean distance in a straight line (tunneling through the Earth as needed). The reference listed before used a granularity of 1000 km, and measured distances along the surface of the Earth. If anyone has different results using different data/metrics, please add them to the article. -- Brhaspati\talk/contribs 14:17, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Removed statement

I've removed this statement from the article: Centroids can be 3D, but for statistical purposes only 2D calculations are published by statistical offices. for not quoting a reference on who specifies such rules, and on whether such rules are universally followed or not. Please quote appropriate references when reinstating. -- Brhaspati\talk/contribs 14:23, 12 May 2008 (UTC)