The significance of the US population

July 27th, 2005 · by David Bradley

Herb Hedgecock posted the latest population figures on the CHEMED-L discussion groups. Apparently, at 21:34 GMT (EST+5) Jul 26, 2005 the US population was 296,722,355 and the world population was 6,456,339,822.

Dr Hedgecock rightly remarks on the amazing degree of precision in these numbers, asking, “How’s that for sig figs ;-)” The US population is about 300 million and the world population is about 6.5 billion, so why don’t the stats just say that?

It makes you think though…each of those sig figs represented a living person at that point in time and if it were you or I standing to be counted, you’d want to be considered a significant figure, now wouldn’t you?