burtviile, Manchester, NH is not in Boston, and neither is Providence, RI, they are their own places and have their own metro areas, additionally, they're in different states. The entire population of the state of Massachusetts isn't even 6.5 million, so it's quite impossible to include Boston at 7.4 million residents.
they seem to be using a Combined Statistical Area for the Boston Population which makes Boston 6th in the US. Don't think that's the same a a Metro Area,
Yep. It's the CSA. If you disagree, there's an easy solution. Get a masters in statistics, apply to work for the Census Bureau, work your way up to the top over several decades, and when you get enough clout, you can institute your own definitions.
The "Boston" CSA covers 65% of the land area of Massachusetts PLUS 75% of the population of New Hampshire PLUS 100% of Rhode Island state (yep, every single person) PLUS a chunk of Connecticut as well!!! Calling all of that "Boston" is just bloody stupid (though the US Stats Department doesn't call it "Boston" either - they name it "Boston-Worcester-Providence", though a more honest description would be "Boston-Worcester-Providence-CapeCod-Manchester-Concord"). PS I haven't worked my way up to the top of the Census Bureau, but I'm still entitled, like any human being, to express my opinion.
"Combined Statistical Areas" are hardly urban. They're sprawling rural and suburban areas of multiple, often nonadjacent, urban areas. Citypopulation.de has always been run by someone with a turn-on for big numbers.
It's ridiculous. Even the definition of CSA says "multiple metropolitan areas". In no way does this constitute a city. Would you say then that New York and Newark are the same city? San Francisco and San José? Cause if you're going by to the CSA classification, they are.
Also, description says "urban area population" but CSAs have large chunks of rural areas. Are you excluding those parts for the final tally?
Parameters on the definition of a city change depending on the quiz. I wonder why. But hey, if you make a critique, you can always bet on getting a condescending reply from Jetpunk eminences.
I usually agree with the sprawling definitions used by citypopulation.de and the Census Bureau, but it goes too far in this case. Counting Laconia, New Shoreham, Worcester, and Cape Cod as "Boston" is insane.
There can't be any way that the Bhilai metro population is larger than Bhopal. I've looked up about every possible measure, and Bhilai isn't anywhere close to Bhopal, let alone the 2.275 million that you have listed. According to the India 2011 Census website, the urban population of Bhilai was 927,864, and of Bhopal, 2,368,145.
Breezed through all the answers except the last India and Brazil ones. Thought about those for a minute but couldn't come up with anything. Gave up, and I don't think I've ever heard of Bhilai before. Belem sounds vaguely familiar.
Whatever metric you use, there is no way Boston has 7.4 million. I know it says "urban area," but you'd need a radius extending hours outside Boston to get that many people. It just isn't correct.
I live in New Hampshire, 39 miles from Boston. For Boston to have a population of 7.2 million you would have to include over half the population of all of New England (pop. 14 million+). And I do NOT live in Boston! Quizmaster, I think you need a better source if this is the kind of info provided by citypopulation.de. The city I live in is neither close to nor related to Boston in any way other than being part of the same Megalopolis that stretches halfway down the East Coast.
Okay, happy to oblige. I previously suggested that your source (citypopulation.de) was not reliable. I now realize that .de domain websites are German in origin. No offense to our German friends but why not use a US site for your info? With all the complaints this quiz seems to be getting it might at least be worth taking a look at alternate resources for population statistics. There, hope that puts us over the top!
Okay there seems to be a lot of weird statistics in this quiz, but what kind of comment is that? Jeez I'm getting sick of the American exceptionalism thinking... German sites are as good as any, it's not like American sites are always right.
There's a map on the sources site that shows what they included in the mentioned urban areas. You can't see every cities name but Boston for example includes a very large area so the 7,350,000 they list seem appropriate. If you then look up the urban area of Boston on Wikipedia (not the search result for Boston but for cities and metropolitan areas of the United States) it says that "Boston-Worcester-Manchester (MA-RI-NH CSA)" has a population of 7,601,061 people (2011 data).
On Wiki's page for "Metropolitan Statistical Areas", which reports census data, the Boston-Worchester-Manchester MSA has 4.77 million residents (2015 estimate). If you added the entire state of Rhode Island, you'd still be 2 million shy of whatever fantasy citypopulation.de (which grossly overstates the populations of several US cities) claims.
I just reread my own comment and wondered what I was thinking when I wrote it. I guess it just seemed to me that if you want to know something about America, ask an American. Similarly, I would look first to a German site for vital statistics regarding Germany. I didn't mean to imply that Americans have all the answers! Just that if you are looking for the right answer, go to the source. That's all I meant and no disrespect towards anyone was intended.
@eric29cocoanuts. That wouldnt be a weird suggestion and quite sensible (though not foulproof, it isnt a given that a country has better data about itself than other countries, and definitely depends on the type of data, different countries are experts in different fields) and logical if it was a quiz about american cities. But it is about the entire world, so data from a german based website would not make more or less sense than using an american based website.
I am sure if you had posted your comment on a US cities quiz you wouldnt have gotten any remarks along the lines you have now. (Maybe you meant only for the boston question, but since you talk about "all the complaints this quiz gets" it seems like you are implying an american source is needed for áll the questions. I think that is where people perhaps read it differently than you intended :) )
I don't have a dog in this fight. We live so far out in the boonies that citypopulation doesn't even know we exist so I'll leave the whining to those in-the-know. (But I'll catch you next time.)
The largest city in New England, the city proper, covering 48 square miles (124 km2), had an estimated population of 636,000 in 2012,[4] making it the 21st largest city in the United States.[3] The city is the anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area called Greater Boston, home to 4.5 million people and the tenth-largest metropolitan area in the country.[6] Greater Boston as a commuting region[10] is home to 7.6 million people, making it the sixth-largest Combined Statistical Area in the United States.[7][11]
I have no clue what the quiz means to include within "urban area", but (maybe) one of these numbers would be it.
Got everyone except Bhilai. I've lived in Brisbane 30 years. 2.75 mill seemed a bit high to me, so I checked it. The last census conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2014 gave the "greater Brisbane area" with a population of 2.27mill.
Pff, take the extra people and run with it. Especially if they're from Sydney. As a Melburnian, the day when we finally surpass Sydney in population will be a grand one.
Yeah, why get hung up on things like censuses when considering population statistics. What would they know? Why don't we just fly over in a helicopter and guesstimate?
Bangalore is Bengaluru now. They are the same thing, only the government is changing to Bengaluru like they did for Calcutta-Kolkata, Madras-Chennai, Bombay-Mumbai, etc.
Brazil hosted the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup in the last couple of years. Plenty of people have heard of Belo now. And the people on JetPunk are kind of self-selected geography nerds, so it's totally believable.
Belo Horizonte is a well-known city in Brazil. It was a host city in the 2014 (Soccer!!) World Cup. Add to this the fact that the QM decided in his wisdom to allow BH for Belo Horizonte - and you can get this by typing, or trying to type BHOPAL, a massive city in its own right, made even more famous by the huge gas leak incident at the Union Carbide pesticide plant which killed huge numbers of people (between 4,000 and 16,000 people are thought to have died directly or indirectly from this incident). Do you still REFUSE to believe it? If so, read more, become aware of more stuff, and then this kind of thing might be more credible to you. Then you might "by"it.
I love how you accept Brasilia AND "Belo Horizonte" for Brazil, but NOT Bombay for India. No, you just had to put a city I've cant even find on a map of asia.
I may be wrong, but the number for Bhilai seems to be combining Bhilai with Raipur. Even looking at citypopulation, I don't see how Bhilai ends up with 2.73 million people.
Definition of CSA (from Wikipedia): "A combined statistical area (CSA) is composed of adjacent metropolitan (MSA) and micropolitan statistical areas (µSA) in the United States and Puerto Rico that can demonstrate economic or social linkage."
So Boston is the center of a CSA that includes Manchester, Worcester, and Providence and their surrounding areas. All of these places clearly have social or economic linkages that are centered in Boston. This isn't hard.
Also- keep in mind that the geographic size of the Boston CSA is pretty close to, say, Dallas or St. Louis. Just because an area has lots of different subdivisions as a function of when it was founded doesn't mean it can't be a CSA.
I think that is the whole point. The part people have an issue with is that it is called cities. If the quiz was called CSA's they wouldn't have anything to complain. The "C" basicly says it all, it is a Combined are, so not cities, or even urban areas,
Ok I forgot the rest of my comment, had started it on another day and apparently never finished it haha
I mean, its using CSA, where Boston becomes the 6th largest in the USA, but including over half of Massachusetts, all of rhode island, and pieces of New hampshire and Connecticut makes absolutely no sense
I would like to echo the several questions about Bhilai. I looked on citypopulation.de and the highest number I found was 1,064,222. Where does the 3,280,000 figure come from?
Brussels is also wrong. By January 1st 2024 Brussels capital area had 1.249.597 inhabitants. The Brussels metro area which isnt commonly used has approx. 1.800.000 inhabitants. So this quiz is by far wrong
Also, description says "urban area population" but CSAs have large chunks of rural areas. Are you excluding those parts for the final tally?
Parameters on the definition of a city change depending on the quiz. I wonder why. But hey, if you make a critique, you can always bet on getting a condescending reply from Jetpunk eminences.
I am sure if you had posted your comment on a US cities quiz you wouldnt have gotten any remarks along the lines you have now. (Maybe you meant only for the boston question, but since you talk about "all the complaints this quiz gets" it seems like you are implying an american source is needed for áll the questions. I think that is where people perhaps read it differently than you intended :) )
The largest city in New England, the city proper, covering 48 square miles (124 km2), had an estimated population of 636,000 in 2012,[4] making it the 21st largest city in the United States.[3] The city is the anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area called Greater Boston, home to 4.5 million people and the tenth-largest metropolitan area in the country.[6] Greater Boston as a commuting region[10] is home to 7.6 million people, making it the sixth-largest Combined Statistical Area in the United States.[7][11]
I have no clue what the quiz means to include within "urban area", but (maybe) one of these numbers would be it.
Btw, I'm positively surprise about the number of people that got my city! :)
So Boston is the center of a CSA that includes Manchester, Worcester, and Providence and their surrounding areas. All of these places clearly have social or economic linkages that are centered in Boston. This isn't hard.
Also- keep in mind that the geographic size of the Boston CSA is pretty close to, say, Dallas or St. Louis. Just because an area has lots of different subdivisions as a function of when it was founded doesn't mean it can't be a CSA.
Ok I forgot the rest of my comment, had started it on another day and apparently never finished it haha
1)Beijing definitely has more inhabitants than Bangkok
2) Berlin has definitely more inhabitants than Barcelona
3) Boston definitely doesnt have 7 million people