Posted on June 15, 2023 2023 by Vaclav Smil
In early 2023 Liam Shaw, a computational biologist in the Department of Biology at Oxford University, proposed to make a statistical reanalysis of all growth figures published originally in my book Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities. I welcomed his suggestion, shared the original data and on June 15, 2023 Liam posted the results for 80 curves on github: https://github.com/liampshaw/Smil-Growth-2019
and they are also archived permanently on Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8043245
Here are six examples of posted growth curves ranging from bacteria to national GDP growth: growth of Escherichia coli, US wheat yields, maximum steam turbine capacities, capacities of commercial airplanes, total number of Internet hosts, and Japan’s GDP growth.
