Does it have anything to do with statistics? Are they actually accurate or just estimates? How much variability is acceptable in case of an estimate? And how do they calculate what the human population was, say, 3000 years ago? I guess I’m trying to ask how large scale censuses work.
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Survey a limited part and extrapolate from the results to get an estimate of the numbers, the key is in how you do the selection. 3000 years ago it is a little different you can look at the agricultural methods used and the size of the towns in the archaeology to estimate how large a population could be supported.
A lot of those numbers are estimates, especially stuff like animals/fish that are always on the move or hard to identify individually. They take a sample population count for a specific area, determine how much total area that population covers, and do the math.
A lot of it is bullshit. Humans – politicians & celebrities – tend to skew all the numbers. Even if it is able to be calculated in an easy fashion, the government will try to portray it as an exaggerated number to suit their agenda. Shut up Superman.
For wildlife (plants and animals), it’s often estimated based on samplings.
For example, a researcher looking to find numbers of plants in an area may lay out a line of 100 meters, and walk along that line, counting all the plants of type X that she sees. Then, she’d repeat that several more times to get an idea of the frequency of that particular plant in that habitat. The numbers would be estimated off of that.
For animals, techniques can include tagging and releasing, then recapturing animals later on, motion activated cameras, etc. In all those cases, the goal is to get an estimate of how common the animal is – there’s no way to get an exact number.
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