What if we just put it all in a pile, then how much of it would there be? And what if we took one thing away, how much would be left? That’s probably how most of us think of statistics, and that’s pretty much exactly what today’s paper did! Put all the living stuff on earth together to see just how much there is. Plus a quick digression to start off the episode about that might have been in the pile if almost everything on earth hadn’t died since then. . .
Reference:
Bar-On, Yinon M. et al. "The Biomass Distribution On Earth". Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences, vol 115, no. 25, 2018, pp. 6506-6511. Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences, doi:10.1073/pnas.1711842115.
Host: Nick Zelt