Top 10 Most Populous U.S. States in 2070

Polynomial extrapolation is generally considered to be bad, isn't it? And is there any intrinsic reason to believe that population growth would be polynomial rather than exponential or some sort of modification thereof?

Because increase in population tends to be proportional to the population, unless some other important factors change over time.

The 50-years-hence estimates come with a massive margin of error and I suspect that the 2070 figures will end up to be very different from the numbers calculated here. But I might be wrong, and there is one good way to check this out (apart from waiting 50 years). I'd suggest to Dan that he takes the population data from 1920, 1930, 1940, 1950, 1960 and 1969, then uses his polynomial tool to "predict" the population fifty years later, in 2019. If that exercise produces a result close to the real present-day population, then he might be onto something!

Ah it's always nice to speculate how these things might progress

That model is indeed simplistic - it hasn't even produced some of the most obvious ones like Puerto Rico and Great Britain.

what?

So the largest 10 states account for the majority of the population. Urbanisation is crazy.

I just did what Jerry928 suggested, without knowing his suggestion. Except I used data 1910,1920,1930,1940,1950 and 1960 predicting 2019.

I tried using linear quadratic and cubic estimation. Non of them is much better than the others, however the cubic the worst.

Here the result of the quadratic (and the reality):

1 California 57.0 ( 1 39.8 )

2 New York 26.1 ( 4 19.9 )

3 Texas 22.9 ( 2 28.7 )

4 Florida 22.5 ( 3 21.3 )

5 Ohio 19.0 ( 7 11.7 )

6 Illinois 17.4 ( 6 12.8 )

7 Michigan 16.1 ( 10 10.0 )

8 New Jersey 14.0 ( 11 9.0 )

9 Pennsylvania 13.3 ( 5 12.8 )

10 Virginia 10.4 ( 12 8.5 )

13 Georgia 8.9 ( 8 10.5 )

15 North Carolina 7.7 ( 9 10.4 )

I think it is quite bad. 8 among the first ten was already there in 1970, however there were no chance to predict the other two.

Watch out Cali, Texas is coming for you :)

In about 50 years, but yeah.

Read the states as Cities and so only got New York 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Tried South Carolina with 5 seconds remaining, the answer was North Carolina lol

Just wait until people realize there's no water in Arizona....

Or that Florida might be too expensive to live in, etc...

This method is quite unkind to the Industrial Midwest, with Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois all falling off the list.

Texas will have higher population then California???