Most Over and Under Populated Countries

Clever concept, well done!

An interesting variant to catch these would be where the over/under population is measured in percentage from the mean rather than absolute value from the mean.

If it's a percentage than this is just the most densely and least densely populated countries on earth.

Well, Singapore's population is about 5.399 mil. I don't think it would have mad the list regardless unless it was about percentage.

I think doing this purely by total population rather than population density is a bit silly. No one would consider China (at 146 people per sq. km) more overpopulated than Bangladesh (at 1237 people per sq. km). But according to this, China's more than 5 times as overpopulated. And where the heck is Mongolia? It seems like it should make this list very easily with a population of 2.9M and a land area of more than 1.5M sq. km.

I agree. My first answers were Monaco & Vatican City - then tried China, and the penny dropped!

I really enjoyed this quiz concept. Very cool. I suspect the Australians who drive around with aggressive anti-immigration bumper stickers about us being full would be surprised to discover we're underpopulated to the tune of 391 million people.

Don't use this quiz to argue for migration policies. The concept here does not take into account the climate of each country. For example, Australia is mostly desert so the actual "full-ness" is much lower than 400 million.

Over half of Australia's population lives within the three main urban centres, and most new immigrants gravitate to these centres...if population was spread more evenly across the habitable parts of the country, there would be no overcrowding issues in the cities. This is not a problem exclusive to Australia

I was about to post this.

How did you calculate this?

Presumably: [population of country]-[world population density]*[area of country]

It took a while to figure out why this was so counter-intuitive. But realizing it's about absolute numbers and not percentages is the key, I guess. So you can automatically exclude any small countries whether they are densely or sparsely populated. That explains why Monaco and Singapore don't show up. Still it's baffling how Mongolia could fail to make the list.

An odd quiz. It should be made clear in the description how these countries are chosen. I spent my time guessing countries with a high population density.

Easiest strategy I can devise: for "overpopulated" just guess countries that are very populous. For "underpopulated" just guess countries that are huge.

Lol guessed Kazakhstan with only 1 second left.

I'm very surprised that Mongolia is not on the underpopulated list

Missed only the Philippines, I was about to type it but I moved to other countries in the region like Indonesia and Vietnam.

Same! I only missed Philippines, nearly got it!

Nice quiz! Forgot Bangladesh, like always.

I don't quite get how Russia would have - 777 million people... It doesn't even have that many people. How are these numbers calculated?

You've misread the description. It's saying that if the entire world had the same population density, then you'd expect Russia (due to its immense size) to have 777 million more people than it currently does.

I got it now, and feel a little dumb. Thanks

Please add a note that overseas territories aren't included, since obviously Denmark would be on the list if Greenland were included.

Yes. Please do.

I'm a bit interested on how you got the set density for the world..

It doesn't seem to be world population / land mass. It's not the median density of the countries and it's not the average. Can you enlighten me on how you got the number for your density?

Ok, thanks for replying!

Can he really take over your quiz like that? Doesn't seem fair.

Didn't really understand the concept but got 5 points by listing the usual suspects

Shouldn't Denmark be added? Greenland is part of it and is extremely huge. But it only has about 50,000 people. It is very underpopulated, also because it is a whole 2,166,000 square kilometers big.

Denmark (incl. Greenland) - there is no note about excluding overseas territories.

shoot just missed libya

I was surprised that Mongolia wasn’t here..