Posts Tagged ‘John Graunt’
“Every picture tells a story”*…
The world’s populations is unevenly spread across the globe. But, plotted by latitude (as per this visualization from Engaging Data), it’s a little more concentrated…
… which is interesting (perhaps better said, “bracing”) to consider aside this illustration from NOAA…
Global warming is coming for most of us: “World Population Distribution by Latitude and Longitude,” from @engagingdata.bsky.social and @climate.noaa.gov.
See also: “The world is heating up. How much can our bodies handle?” from @gristnews.bsky.social and “Understanding Climate Migration,” from RAND.
* traditional saying
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As we feel the heat, we might spare a thought for John Graunt; he died on this date in 1674. A haberdasher turned statistician, he is considered by many to be the father of demography (the statistical study of human populations).
A charter member of The Royal Society, Graunt distributed a 90-page book, Natural and Political Observations Mentioned in a Following Index, and Made upon the Bills of Mortality at the February, 1662 Society meeting. He described his work as having “reduced several great confused volumes” of parish records into a few easily to understood tables, and “abridged such Observations… into a few succinct Paragraphs.” He initiated “life tables” of life expectancy. His use of demographics was further pioneered by his friend Sir William Petty and Edmond Halley, the Astronomer Royal.
Graunt’s work also gives him some claim to having been the first epidemiologist.
“The fact is that no species has ever had such wholesale control over everything on earth, living or dead, as we now have”*…
From the always-amazing Randall Munroe, who reminds us that bacteria still outweigh us thousands to one– and that’s not counting the pounds of them in each of our bodies…
* “The fact is that no species has ever had such wholesale control over everything on earth, living or dead, as we now have. That lays upon us, whether we like it or not, an awesome responsibility. In our hands now lies not only our own future, but that of all other living creatures with whom we share the earth.”
― David Attenborough, Life on Earth
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As we watch our weight, we might send carefully-calculated birthday greetings to John Graunt; he was born on this date in 1620. A London haberdasher by trade, Graunt was fascinated the human tide that swelled around him– a fascination that led him to create the first statistically-based estimation of the population of London in his book Natural and Political Observations Made upon the Bills of Mortality, undertaken as Charles II and other officials were trying to create a system to warn of the onset and spread of bubonic plague in the city. Profiled as one of Aubrey’s Brief Lives, Graunt has been called the first statistician, the first demographer, and was in any case the first statistician to become a fellow of the Royal Society of London.
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