Sunday, March 18, 2012

[mxoxelxv] Sampling the earth by population

Sample points on the earth (or any region) weighted by population density.  One way to do it is recursive subdivision. Regions are selected weighted by internal population (integral of density), then divided and sampled further.

Is there a published population density function of the U.S. or the world?

Geohash but concentrate on populated -- accessible -- locations. For complicated random sampling, use the hash as the seed for a random number generator.

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