Lesson 2, Chapter 2: Calculating Population Density

Question 1

Population density

Answer 1

a measure of how many people occupy a given unit of land

Question 2

what is the difference between population distribution and population density?

Answer 2

population distribution is concerned with where people live, whereas population density is concerned with how many people live in a given place

Question 3

arithmetic density and the problem with it

Answer 3

total population / total land area; does not account for the deviations in population distribution throughout the land area

Question 4

physiological density; what information does it tell us?

Answer 4

total population / total arable (land that can be used for agriculture) land; this measures whether a population can feed itself

Question 5

agricultural density; what information does it tell us?

Answer 5

total farmers / total arable land; lower number means lower farmers to grow food, but this doesn’t necessarily indicate that everyone in the place is going to starve, whereas it might mean that farming in that place has become mechanized; higher number means that most farmers are subsistence farmers, meaning that they only grow when they have – they don’t sell their food

Question 6

realistically, are these calculations of any use individually?

Answer 6

no, but when you combine them, we can more clearly pinpoint certain aspects of a population