List of countries and dependencies by population

This is a list of countries and dependent territories by population. It includes sovereign states, inhabited dependent territories, and, in some cases, constituent countries of sovereign states, with inclusion within the list being primarily based on the ISO standard ISO 3166-1. For instance, the United Kingdom is considered as a single entity while the constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands are considered separately. In addition, this list includes certain states with limited recognition not found in ISO 3166-1.

The population figures do not reflect the practice of countries that report significantly different populations of citizens domestically and overall. Some countries, notably Thailand, do not report total population, exclusively counting citizens; for total populations an international agency must issue an estimate.

Also given in percent is each country's population compared to the population of the world, which the United States Census Bureau estimated at 7.3 billion in February 2014.

Record chart

A record chart is a ranking of recorded music according to popularity during a given period of time. Examples of music charts are the Hit parade, the Billboard Hot 100 or Top 40.

Many different criteria are used in different charts, including sales of records, cassettes and compact discs, the amount of radio airplay, and since the introduction of digital technology, the number of downloads and the amount of streaming activity.

Some charts are specific to a particular musical genre and most to a particular geographical location (although download charts are not easily pinned down in this way). The most common period of time covered by a chart is one week with the chart being printed or broadcast at the end of this time. Summary charts for years and decades are then calculated from their component weekly charts. Component charts have become an increasingly important way to measure the commercial success of individual songs.

Chart hit

Islam by country

Muslims constitute the world's second largest religious group. According to a 2010 study and released January 2011, Islam has 1.7 billion adherents, making up over 22% of the world population. According to another study in 2015 Islam has 1.7 billion adherents. Most Muslims are either of two denominations: Sunni (85-86%) or Shia (12–13%).

Islam is the dominant religion in the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, and some parts of Asia. Large communities of Muslims are also found in China, the Balkans, India, and Russia. Other parts of the world host large Muslim immigrant communities; in Western Europe, for instance, Islam is the second largest religion after Christianity, where it represents 6% of the total population.

Denominations

Historically, Islam was divided into three major religious denominations well known as Sunni, Khawarij and Shī‘ah. Nowadays, Sunnis constitute more than 85% of the overall Muslim population while the Shi'as are slightly more than 12%.

Country

A country is a region that is identified as a distinct entity in political geography. A country may be an independent sovereign state or one that is occupied by another state, as a non-sovereign or formerly sovereign political division, or a geographic region associated with sets of previously independent or differently associated people with distinct political characteristics. Regardless of the physical geography, in the modern internationally accepted legal definition as defined by the League of Nations in 1937 and reaffirmed by the United Nations in 1945, a resident of a country is subject to the independent exercise of legal jurisdiction.

Sometimes the word countries is used to refer both to sovereign states and to other political entities, while other times it refers only to states. For example, the CIA World Factbook uses the word in its "Country name" field to refer to "a wide variety of dependencies, areas of special sovereignty, uninhabited islands, and other entities in addition to the traditional countries or independent states".^{[Note 1]}

Population

A population is a summation of all the organisms of the same group or species, which live in a particular geographical area, and have the capability of interbreeding.

In ecology, the population of a certain species in a certain area is estimated using the Lincoln Index. The area that is used to define a sexual population is defined as the area where inter-breeding is potentially possible between any pair within the area. The probability of interbreeding is greater than the probability of cross-breeding with individuals from other areas. Under normal conditions, breeding is substantially more common within the area than across the border.

In sociology, population refers to a collection of humans. Demography is a social science which entails the statistical study of human populations. This article refers mainly to human population.

Population genetics (ecology)

In population genetics a sexual population is a set of organisms in which any pair of members can breed together. This means that they can regularly exchange gametes to produce normally-fertile offspring, and such a breeding group is also known therefore as a gamodeme. This also implies that all members belong to the same of species, such as humans. If the gamodeme is very large (theoretically, approaching infinity), and all gene alleles are uniformly distributed by the gametes within it, the gamodeme is said to be panmictic. Under this state, allele (gamete) frequencies can be converted to genotype (zygote) frequencies by expanding an appropriate quadratic equation, as shown by Sir Ronald Fisher in his establishment of quantitative genetics.