The population of the United Kingdom in 2024 was estimated to be approximately 69.3 million, with over 9.6 million people living in South East England. London had the next highest population, at almost 9.1 million people, followed by the North West England at 7.7 million. With the UK's population generally concentrated in England, most English regions have larger populations than the constituent countries of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, which had populations of 5.5 million, 3.2 million, and 1.9 million respectively. English counties and cities The United Kingdom is a patchwork of various regional units, within England the largest of these are the regions shown here, which show how London, along with the rest of South East England had around 18 million people living there in this year. The next significant regional units in England are the 47 metropolitan and ceremonial counties. After London, the metropolitan counties of the West Midlands, Greater Manchester, and West Yorkshire were the biggest of these counties, due to covering the large urban areas of Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds respectively. Regional divisions in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland The smaller countries that comprise the United Kingdom each have different local subdivisions. Within Scotland these are called council areas, whereas in Wales the main regional units are called unitary authorities. Scotland's largest Council Area by population is that of Glasgow City at over 650,000, while in Wales, it was the Cardiff Unitary Authority at around 384,000. Northern Ireland, on the other hand, has eleven local government districts, the largest of which is Belfast with a population of approxiamtely 352,000.

According to the 2021 Census, London was the most ethnically diverse region in England and Wales – 63.2% of residents identified with an ethnic minority group.

In 2024, the population of the United Kingdom reached 69.3 million, compared with 68.5 million in 2023. The UK population has more than doubled since 1871 when just under 31.5 million lived in the UK and has grown by around 10.4 million since the start of the twenty-first century. For most of the twentieth century, the UK population steadily increased, with two noticeable drops in population occurring during World War One (1914-1918) and in World War Two (1939-1945). Demographic trends in postwar Britain After World War Two, Britain and many other countries in the Western world experienced a 'baby boom,' with a postwar peak of 1.02 million live births in 1947. Although the number of births fell between 1948 and 1955, they increased again between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s, with more than one million people born in 1964. Since 1964, however, the UK birth rate has fallen from 18.8 births per 1,000 people to a low of just 10.2 in 2020. As a result, the UK population has gotten significantly older, with the country's median age increasing from 37.9 years in 2001 to 40.7 years in 2022. What are the most populated areas of the UK? The vast majority of people in the UK live in England, which had a population of 58.6 million people in 2024. By comparison, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland had populations of 5.5 million, 3.2 million, and 1.9 million, respectively. Within England, South East England had the largest population, at over 9.6 million, followed by the UK's vast capital city of London, at almost 9.1 million. London is far larger than any other UK city in terms of urban agglomeration, with just four other cities; Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, and Glasgow, boasting populations that exceed one million people.

In 2023, London had a gross domestic product of over 569 billion British pounds, by far the most of any region of the United Kingdom. The region of South East England which surrounds London had the second-highest GDP in this year, at over 360 billion pounds. North West England, which includes the major cities of Manchester and Liverpool, had the third-largest GDP among UK regions, at almost 250 billion pounds. Levelling Up the UK London’s economic dominance of the UK can clearly be seen when compared to the other regions of the country. In terms of GDP per capita, the gap between London and the rest of the country is striking, standing at over 63,600 pounds per person in the UK capital, compared with just over 37,100 pounds in the rest of the country. To address the economic imbalance, successive UK governments have tried to implement "levelling-up policies", which aim to boost investment and productivity in neglected areas of the country. The success of these programs going forward may depend on their scale, as it will likely take high levels of investment to reverse economic neglect regions have faced in the recent past. Overall UK GDP The gross domestic product for the whole of the United Kingdom amounted to 2.56 trillion British pounds in 2024. During this year, GDP grew by 0.9 percent, following a growth rate of 0.4 percent in 2023. Due to the overall population of the UK growing faster than the economy, however, GDP per capita in the UK fell in both 2023 and 2024. Nevertheless, the UK remains one of the world’s biggest economies, with just five countries (the United States, China, Japan, Germany, and India) having larger economies. It is it likely that several other countries will overtake the UK economy in the coming years, with Indonesia, Brazil, Russia, and Mexico all expected to have larger economies than Britain by 2050.

With approximately 122.1 crimes per 1,000 population, Cleveland, in North East England, had the highest crime rate of all the police force areas in England and Wales in 2024/25. High crime rates are evident in other areas of northern England, such as West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester at 114.5 and 108.2, respectively. In the UK capital, London, the crime rate was 105.5 per 1,000 people. The lowest crime rate in England was in the relatively rural areas of Wiltshire in South West England, as well as North Yorkshire. Overall crime in England and Wales The number of crimes in England and Wales reached approximately 6.74 million in 2022/23, falling slightly to 6.66 million in 2023/24, and 6.59 million in 2024/25. Overall crime has been rising steadily across England and Wales for almost a decade, even when adjusted for population rises. In 2022/23, for example, the crime rate in England and Wales was 93.6, the highest since 2006/07. When compared with the rest of the United Kingdom, England and Wales is something of an outlier, as crime rates for Scotland and Northern Ireland have not followed the same trajectory of rising crime. Additionally, there has been a sharp increase in violent crimes and sexual offences since the mid-2010s in England and Wales. While theft offences have generally been falling, the number of shoplifting offences reached a peak of 530,640 in 2024/25. Troubled justice system under pressure Alongside rising crime figures, many indicators also signal that the justice system is getting pushed to breaking point. The percentage of crimes that are solved in England and Wales was just 5.7 percent in 2023, with sexual offences having a clearance rate of just 3.6 percent. Crimes are also taking far longer than usual to pass through the justice system. In 2022, it took an average of 407 days for a crown court case to reach a conclusion from the time of the offence, compared with 233 days in 2018. This is most likely related to the large backlog of cases in crown courts, which reached over 67,750 in 2023. Furthermore, prisons in England and Wales are dangerously overcrowded, with the government even releasing some prisoners early to address the issue.

The Traveling Salesperson Problem (TSP) is a class problem of computer science that seeks to find the shortest route between a group of cities. It is an NP-hard problem in combinatorial optimization, important in theoretical computer science and operations research.

https://data.heatonresearch.com/images/wustl/kaggle/tsp/world-tsp.png" alt="World Map">

In this Kaggle competition, your goal is not to find the shortest route among cities. Rather, you must attempt to determine the route labeled on a map.

Calculating Line Distances

The data for this competition is not made up of real-world maps, but rather randomly generated maps of varying attributes of size, city count, and optimality of the routes. The following image demonstrates a relatively small map, with few cities, and an optimal route.

https://data.heatonresearch.com/images/wustl/kaggle/tsp/1.jpg" alt="Small Map">

Not all maps are this small, or contain this optimal a route. Consider the following map, which is much larger.

https://data.heatonresearch.com/images/wustl/kaggle/tsp/6.jpg" alt="Larger Map">

The following attributes were randomly selected to generate each image.

• Height
• Width
• City count
• Cycles of Simulated Annealing optimization of initial random path

The path distance is based on the sum of the Euclidean distance of all segments in the path. The distance units are in pixels.

Dataset Challenges

This is a regression problem, you are to estimate the total path length. Several challenges to consider.

• If you indiscriminately scale the maps, you will lose size information.
• Paths might overlap, causing the ration of total pixels to total length to become misleading.
• As paths overlap bot other path segments and cities, the resulting color becomes brighter.

The following picture shows a section from one map zoomed to the pixel-level:

https://data.heatonresearch.com/images/wustl/kaggle/tsp/tsp_zoom.jpg" alt="TSP Zoom">

CSV Files

The following CSV files are provided, in addition to the images.

• train.csv - Training data, with distance labels.
• test.csv - Test data without distance labels.
• tsp-all.csv - Training and test data combined with complete labels and additional information about each generated map.

CSV File Format

The tsp-all.csv file contains the following data.

id,filename,distance,key
0,0.jpg,83110,503x673-270-83110.jpg
1,1.jpg,1035,906x222-10-1035.jpg
2,2.jpg,20756,810x999-299-20756.jpg
3,3.jpg,13286,781x717-272-13286.jpg
4,4.jpg,13924,609x884-312-13924.jpg

The columns:

• id - A unique ID that allows linking across all three CSV files.
• filename - The name of each map's image file.
• distance - The total distance through the cities, this is the y/label.
• key - The generator filename, provides the dimensions, city count, & distance.

There were 20,944 incidences of racist hate crime reported by the London Metropolitan Police in the 2023/24 reporting year, by far the most of any police force area in England and Wales. In the same time period, there were 7,466 racist incidents reported in the West Midlands.