A population is all the organisms that both belong to the same group or species and live in the same geographical area. In ecology the population of a certain species in a certain area is estimated using the Lincoln Index. The area that is used to define a sexual population is such that inter-breeding is possible between any pair within the area and more probable than cross-breeding with individuals from other areas. Normally breeding is substantially more common within the area than across the border.
In sociology, population refers to a collection of human beings. Demography is a social science which entails the statistical study of human populations. This article refers mainly to human population.
Read more about Population: Population Genetics, World Human Population
Famous quotes containing the word population:
“This was the Eastham famous of late years for its camp- meetings, held in a grove near by, to which thousands flock from all parts of the Bay. We conjectured that the reason for the perhaps unusual, if not unhealthful development of the religious sentiment here, was the fact that a large portion of the population are women whose husbands and sons are either abroad on the sea, or else drowned, and there is nobody but they and the ministers left behind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“O for a man who is a man, and, as my neighbor says, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through! Our statistics are at fault: the population has been returned too large. How many men are there to a square thousand miles in this country? Hardly one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A multitude of little superfluous precautions engender here a population of deputies and sub-officials, each of whom acquits himself with an air of importance and a rigorous precision, which seemed to say, though everything is done with much silence, “Make way, I am one of the members of the grand machine of state.””
—Marquis De Custine (1790–1857)