The Meaning of Population & What is the Mean of Population?
What is the meaning of population and what does the mean of population even mean? Read on to be a member of the population who knows!
Population Meaning: What is Population?
Population refers to the total number of individuals inhabiting a specific country, area, or place; or sharing a common characteristic.
In this sense it’s more than just a headcount – it’s about understanding how people, animals, or organisms exist, interact, grow, and adapt within their environment.
In daily use, the world population means a group of people or a group of living beings. When we think of population, we usually think of the population of different countries or the population of big cities. This is because in its general context, a population is a complete set group of individuals. This can be the number of people living in a country, the number of people of a certain nationality worldwide, or even a group of people with common interests.
For example, the world’s population is thought to be over 8 billion people!
With respect to statistics, a population is a pool of people from which a statistical sample is taken for a study. This is usually a selection of individuals grouped by a common feature.
Population vs. Samples
A sample is defined as a significant portion of a population, not an entire population. A statistical analysis of a sample must have an approximate standard deviation or standard error. If we chose the entire population there would be no error.
Therefore, a sample is a randomly selected, representative portion of a population. It’s essentially a smaller group that has been chosen from the population that possesses all of the population’s attributes. The observations and inferences drawn from the sample data are then applied to the entire population to draw a conclusion.
The population is usually denoted in statistical equations by an uppercase N, while the sample of the population is typically symbolized by a lowercase n.
The Mean of Population
Not to be confused with the meaning of population, the mean of population is a statistical measure that shows the average value of a particular collection of data for a specific population.
By adding up all of the population’s values and dividing the result by the entire number of data points, the mean is calculated.
The formula for calculating the mean (denoted by μ) with N data points is:
Mean = Sum of all values/N
The “sum of all values” means the sum of all individual data points in a population. “N” represents the total number of data points in the population.
In the context of population, the “mean” is typically used to refer to the average value of a particular characteristic within that population. For instance, if you’re looking at the mean age of a population, you would add up the ages of all individuals and then divide by the total number of individuals. This provides a central value that gives you a sense of the typical age within that population.
This is just one of several ways to describe the characteristics of a population.
In statistics, the mean is a measure of central tendency that’s commonly used to summarize data and understand the average value of a variable across a group. In fact, you can calculate the average value of any given set of data using the mean.
You can easily find the mean of a set of values by putting them into this online mean calculator.
A dataset’s primary trend can be summarized and understood using the fundamental statistical concept of the mean. It can be helpful for comparing various populations, spotting patterns, or even making forecasts based on past observations.
What is the Study of Population Called?
The study of populations, their traits, and how they vary geographically and over time is known as demography. Public economic and policy decisions are influenced by demography and population statistics.
The US census is one of the most ambitious studies of population that exists. This study is done to find out about the makeup of the population, how many congressional seats each state gets, and how federal funds are to be distributed. According to the data collected, the government often decides where hospitals and schools will be built.
Generally, the bigger the population, the greater the need.
