In the next three chapters, I give an overview of how human populations evolved in various places and over time. The stories about ancient civilizations illustrate the socio-political, economic and environmental determinants of rise and decline. A variety of mechanisms and theories are proposed to ‘explain’ these processes (Chapter 3). By the end of the first millennium in the Common Era (CE), some populations on the continent of Europe began, over the course of half-a-dozen centuries, to get a prominent political-economic and military position in the world. It started the story of industrialization and enlightenment, two key aspects of what is known as Modernity. What did this mean in the ‘material’ sense: the numbers on people, economic activity, resource use, environmental destruction? (Chapter 4). Second, what did it mean for the less material aspects of life: the shifting balance between the institutions of state, church and market, the ‘progress’ brought by science and technology, and the concomitant changes in the perception of what is good and bad (Chapter 5)?

Any map of the languages of Canada and the USA looks like a veritable mosaic, whether we look at a map of indigenous languages or a map of languages that arrived in the Americas in the last half a millennium, first with early European colonizers (not only English, but French, Dutch, even Swedish made an impact in the early colonial period), but also with more recent waves of immigrants. The Ethnologue list of immigrant languages spoken in the USA alone includes 203 languages, running alphabetically from Adamawa Fulfulde (a Niger-Congo language from West Africa; see Chapter 7) to Zoogocho Zapotec (an Oto-Manguean language from Northern Oaxaca, Mexico; see Chapter 12). There are altogether 255 living languages spoken in Canada and the USA. Thus, like New Guinea and Australia (see Chapter 10), Canada and the USA exhibit a high degree of linguistic diversity, muted by waves of language extinction in the last few centuries, but coupled with our incomplete understanding of language relatedness in the region, which creates a very muddled picture of the linguistic landscape.

Water is essential for (human) life, as necessity and threat. With industrialization, water use has grown exponentially, notably in agriculture (irrigation). Withdrawal from open water and groundwater constitutes blue water use. Water in soils and vegetation is called green water; grey water refers to waste water flows. The complex stocks and flows of water can be related to human activity in the water footprint. Blue water use of surface and groundwater and its availability vary greatly across the globe. Many people live in water-stressed regions, due to groundwater depletion, little and/or irregular rain and declining quality due to pollution. Water is a prime example of a common pool resource (CPR), but increasing demand and subsequent scarcity have led to marketization and privatization of water provision and infrastructure.Because water use is intrinsically regional, water modelling and governance should be context-specific and participatory. The path to sustainable water use will have to address the divergent views on water as private or public good, and on ways to connect water engineering (including for hydropower) to practices less damaging for biodiversity (nature-based solutions).

Chapter 17 covers TWO-WAY INTERACTIONS IN MULTIPLE REGRESSION and includes the following specific topics, among others: Two-Way Interaction, First-Order Effects, Main Effects, Interaction Effects, Model Selection, AIC, BIC, and Probing Interactions.

Chapter 15 covers CORRELATION AND SIMPLE REGRESSION AS INFERENTIAL TECHNIQUES and includes the following specific topics, among others:Bivariate Normal Distribution, Statistical Significance Test of Correlation, Confidence Intervals, Statistical Significance of b-Weight, Fit of the Overall Regression Equation, R and R-squared, Adjusted R-squared, Regression Diagnostics, Residual Plots, Influential Observations, Discrepancy, Leverage, Influence, and Power Analyses.

Parts of Europe experienced from the seventeenth century a rapid growth in economic activity, in a combination of scientific discoveries and colonial conquest and exploitation. In a series of processes, some of them with medieval roots, populations and economic output (approximated in terms of monetary transactions) increased exponentially, first in Europe and its offshoots, then in the 20th century also elswhere. Humanity had entered the Anthropocene. Patterns of economic activity changed from agriculture to manufacturing, then to services. Trade connections multiplied in waves of globalization. Economic inequality within and between countries rose significantly during most of these centuries; it was greatly influenced by the rapid economic growth in China. The industrialization had great and harmful impacts on Nature, in the form of massive changes in landscapes and of pollution of air, water and soils. This is considered in detail in the chapters on food, water, energy and materials.

Chapter 1 provides an introdution to the study of statistics and covers the following specific topics among others: Statistical Software in Data Analysis, Descriptive and Inferential Statistics, Measurement of Variables, and an introduction to the Stata Software Package

Industrialization and the concomitant growth in populations and economic activity happened in parallel with changes in everyday life, both material (hygiene, diet, mobility) and immaterial (literacy, law, values and ideas about political order and human life). It is associated with Enlightenment, the emancipatory stream of Modernity. It meant changing roles and relations between the major institutions: (nation-)state, church and (community-)market. The outstanding hallmark was and is the idea of Progress, exemplified in the characteristics of the scientific worldview and its claim to ’objective Truth’. Another feature lies in the new ideas about good and evil, as propounded in Industrial Era ethics of liberalism and utilitarianism and in Enlightenment ethics.

What is sustainable development about? Development means an unfolding of the individual and the collective along the dimensions of body, mind and spirit. Sustainability refers to the capability to uphold and develop a certain desired situation. Sustainable development can thus be interpreted as the wish and capability to preserve the quality of (human) life and its unfoldment, in harmony with other living beings and within the terrestrial constraints. It represents ideals and aspirations. Key aspects are the way in which the collective organizes their realization through institutions, and on the basis of which views of Nature and of needs.

Chapter 11 covers INFERENCES INVOLVING THE MEAN WHEN σ IS NOT KNOWN: ONE- AND TWO-SAMPLE DESIGNS and includes the following specific topics, among others: t-Distribution, Degrees of Freedom, t-test assumptions, one-sample t-test, two-sample test for independent groups, two-sample test for related groups, paired-sample t-tests, effect size, the bootstrap, and power analysis.