Reconstructing past population size from present day genetic data is a major
goal of population genetics. Recent empirical studies infer population size
history using coalescent-based models applied to a small number of individuals.
Here we provide tight bounds on the amount of exact coalescence time data
needed to recover the population size history of a single, panmictic population
at a certain level of accuracy. In practice, coalescence times are estimated
from sequence data and so our lower bounds should be taken as rather
conservative.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figures; v2 is significantly revised from v