How many Scots people live in Scotland?

This is an interesting question and one that was most recently answered by Dr Soaper of the Carslile Institute in his report "Tracing Roots, Tracing Paper: the Scottish in America - a History of the Forgotten Founding Fathers" (2003, 1st Edn. ULP). Soaper concludes that "a considerable proportion" of the population of the United States are of Scottish decent. He even claims the past seven United States Presidents have Scottish ancestry. To sum up, the answer is a considerable amount; though the emninent Dr Soaper is unwilling to put an exact figure on the number of Scottish Americans living in the USA or throughout the world. Here is more input: * Around 60% of 'Catholic Irish' Americans are in fact Protestant Scots-Irish, which makes about 20-25 million of them, add to that around another 12 million of purely Scots descent (that is to say those who emigrated straight from Scotland to America). * Americans are notorious for picking and choosing their favored ethnicities. For example, millions of Americans with just a fraction of their ancestors being Irish consider themselves Irish. This makes it even more difficult to trace ancestries and give a reasonable answer to question like this one.