population geography published this article page no 7 Measures of Density
Crude density, also known as arithmetic density, is the most commonly used measure of population density. It is expressed as the number of people divided by the total area. India, for example, has an average density of 324 persons per square kilometer, as per the latest census of 2001. Crude or arithmetic density can be worked out separately for rural and urban areas. Being an average figure, crude density suffers from a serious limitation. Crude density is one dimensional and tells little about the opportunities land. Since it takes into account the total surface area, crude density presents a very misleading picture, and particularly when there is a substantial variation in density within a region.Egypt, for instance, with a population of 1004.9 thousand square kilometers, presents a crude density of 72 persons per square kilometer. However, it has been estimated that nearly 98 per cent of Egypt’s population occupies less than 5 per cent of the country’s total area in the nile valley and delta where density is more than 1,000 person per square kilometer while the rest of the country is desert. Geographers have, therefore, devised other measures of density by modifying numerator or both to illustrate the actual variation in the density of human occupation within a region settlement geography buynow
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