I want to access information regarding the population of the world, over the last 10,000 years, and then visualize it with some annotations.
In particular case, I want to:
- grab world population data over time,
- fit a function,
- plot the function,
- calculate and shade area under the cover over the last 10 years in order to show what fraction of all humans ever were born over the last 10 years, and then
- label it comprehensibly with units.
But to do all that I would like reproducible access to the underlying dataset. This is where I get stuck.
How do I start from the automatic query results I can get from Wolfram Alpha or from a "free form" query, and get access to an actual object (an Entity) in Wolfram Cloud, where I can see its properties so I can plot it myself in a controlled way?
For instance, if I do a "Wolfram Alpha" query for "world population", I get interactive UI where I can click on "long-term projection" and get UI of a nicely labeled plot. Fine, but I want the data so I can built my own plot for my own purposes, and none of this UI shows how to get this information explicitly.
If I do a "free form" query, I get a TimeSeries object. I can plot this with DateListPlot and I can learn a bit about it with the Information function. But still I don't see what code I could use to retrieve this data explicitly by its name or address within the Wolfram system, without relying on the free form query interpreter.
In general, I am trying to find out how to bridge the gap from the open ended query systems of Wolfram Alpha or from the free form query, to being able to write Wolfram Language code which lets me grab, inspect, and plot the data in an explicit and reproducible way.