World Population Growth

a) Use Excel to make a scatterplot of the following data showing the world's population growth in billions.

Then find the best-fit regression line and the best-fit exponential function and add these to your chart.

Add the necessary labels to give a professional looking chart

Year 1927 1960 1974 1987 1999 2012 2018

Population 2 3 4 5 6 7 7.6

b) Use Excel to find the correlation coefficients for the two models (linear and exponential).

Does either model fit the data to an acceptable level? Which one do you think is better?

c) Use your answer(s) to a) and b) to predict the world's population size in 2040.

d) Visit http://www.nationmaster.com/ and compare population growth rates of certain countries, and compare this with the level of economic prosperity of these countries. Under 'Tables, graphs, maps and pie charts' select 'Economy' and after waiting for things to load 'Poverty and Inequality > Population below $1 (PPP) per day' to find countries where 40% of the population live in poverty. Then repeat, this time using 'People' and 'Population growth' to find countries whose annual growth is 2.75% or more. List both sets and then find all countries that are high on both lists. Where are these countries?