Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/11/20/population-of-england-named.html
…
2 Likes
Surprised the two world wars aren’t more pronounced.
Could we get a bit more definition of “longest data series?” Off the top of my head, this comes to mind as longer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_popes
No doubt this doesn’t qualify for some reason. So what’s the definition?
1 Like
What nonsense scale is the y-axis? Reminds me of this.
2 Likes
It’s a little hard to tell because they were inconsistent with the labels, but I think that’s a log scale.
WWII doesn’t show up as much because it’s way up there in the compressed part of the scale, and also because we’re talking about England here, not Russia.
10 Likes
It’s a logarithmic scale (which is perfectly cromulent) and it starts at zero (which is appropriate but very, very rare in online graphs).
What I find odd is its assertion that the population of England was zero at the time of the Conquest. I am pretty sure that is incorrect. And probably racist somehow.
9 Likes
@Dioptase1 Longest prospective data series; there are data series going back into paleolontological times here on earth, and even longer for astronomical and cosmological data.
2 Likes
uhm, zero is at -infinity.
1 Like
I’m thinking back in the 12th century they didn’t count the “native savages” as part of the population.
We didn’t know how to count until the French turned up so this is technically correct.
Also, the number one reason we hate them, now we have numbers.
15 Likes
Well, it presumably starts at 10 people, or possibly 2.718, but yes.
2 Likes
Cool. Thanks. And for those of us that had to look it up:
2 Likes
What about the population of China? They’ve been doing a census for at least 2000 years.
1 Like
How different life must have been in Empty England ca 1450. Must have really bottle-necked the gene pool too.
2 Likes
You can’t have a log scale go to zero. It isn’t labeled but it looks like the lower edge of the plot is at about 2,000, or maybe 1500.
1 Like
Antarctic ice records of atmospheric CO2 and dendrochronological records of rainfall immediately come to mind, too.
That would actually be the Domesday book, in medieval english.
4 Likes
And to pile on even further- “4,000 thousands of persons”? That is just about the most cofusing possible way to say “4 million people”
2 Likes
I know that they used the log scale to fit the whole thing in one graph but it’s not great for realism. It makes it look like 90% of people died to the black death, at a glance at least. It’s closer to 50% in reality.
Maybe it starts a 1?
