JN3800: Data Skills Test

For this assignment we were instructed to locate freely available facts/statistics from a source from the Internet.

The Guardian Data blog has sourced the numbers of the world's population by country and posted a spreadsheet of the data here, in wake of the seven-billionth human in the world being born.

From the mass of data supplied, there are some interesting discussions that can be raised when comparing the populations of the European State currently to that of fifty years ago.

As the above graph shows, the total population of the countries comprising the Members of the European State grew from 406,472 million to 501,917 million over 50 years. This is an overall average increase per year of an estimated 1.9 million people between 1961 and 2011.

When looking at this is in more detail we can see that of those comprising the European State, it can be noted that those with the largest populations in 1961 (the top five being Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, France and Spain in descending order) are the ones with the largest increase in population by 2011. 

The largest increase coming from France where the population as increased from 46,218 million to 63,126 million over the fifty years studied, an increase of 16,845 million people. The smallest increase came over the fifty years was in smallest country [in population], Malta, with an average increase of 2.12 million people a year (in comparison to France's 336.9 million). 

The only decline in population over the fifty years that can be found is in Hungary saw a decrease of 44 million people, from 10,010 million to 9,966 million.

It is estimated by the U.N that the seven-billionth citizen shall be born on the 31st October, the same day as this post was written.

The data was provided by The Guardian's Data blog and can be accessed here. To view their analysis of the data please visit here.

This post was written by Brad Wilkinson. Please email bwilkinson@uclan.ac.uk if you would like to contact him.