It means our putative 24-year-old faces a future of a small working population supporting a large number of elderly people.

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Selecting even a small number of individuals randomly from a large population allows you to say things about the whole population.

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Nevada became a bastion for Republicans in the '70s and '80s when a population boom brought a large number of white, "Reagan Republicans" to the state.

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The park is home to two-thirds of the world's one-horned rhino population and also has a large number of elephants, tigers and other wildlife.

BBC: India deploys drones to save rhinos in Assam state

Following that, there are a number of examples where antagonizing the population of would be attackers at large can serve as a motivation for them to expend the time necessary to find a way into a system.

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The Medicare program provides a good case study because a large number of uninsured people, about 7.5 percent of the population, got health insurance almost immediately.

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"These trials require such a large number of people because of the rareness of lung cancer in the overall population, " says Isham.

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At times this number will comprise the entire sample, a large figure that has been designed to reflect the views of the entire population.

BBC: Polls: No indication of huge Romanian-Bulgarian influx