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The rectangularness of countries
- dredger 10y agoSomething doesn't seem right about this algorithm you used to draw the rectangles. If you used a similar algorithm to define circles, I feel like you would get a artificially high amount of circularness for countries that are not that circular.
- elcapitan 10y agoOr probably just any kind of polygon from triangle to whatever you choose to find. The common property is probably rather convex shape than rectangularness or anything arbitrary like that. Maybe because convex borders are easier to protect or less threatening to neighbors or something like that?
- pavel_lishin 10y agoNeat! To me, Egypt doesn't look very rectangular at all. The very deep concave section, and the sharp convex portion at the bottom right completely break rectangularity for me. I'm also curious as to why Nauru seems to have such sharp, straight borders - it looks more like the Vatican than a Pacific island.
- throwanem 10y agoI'm guessing low resolution in whatever dataset was used.
- mikeash 10y agoThe measure is how much overlap there is with a rectangle of the same area, which means that a narrow but deep deviation is weighted the same as a shallow but long deviation along the border. I'd think that an intuitive notion of "rectangulareness" (rectanglosity? rectangularity?) would better match some sort of RMS measurement, where the penalty for a mismatch is proportional to the square of its distance from the ideal rectangle. It would be really interesting to see what changes with that sort of measurement. Regarding Nauru, I think that's just poor resolution in the source data. It's only a couple of miles across, and the plot looks like it attempted to approximate the coastline with points roughly 1 mile (maybe 2km?) apart.
- akavi 10y agoThere's a couple of different scoring rules that would be interesting, I think. Another one might be: What's the ratio between the area of the country and the smallest rectangle which bounds the country. This would "punish" countries with protuberances more than ones with "in-cuts", which "feels right" to me.
- justinpombrio 10y agoThat measure (call it boxability) is a bit harsh, though. The US shouldn't have to pay that much for Hawaii.
- mikeash 10y agoFor some reason, your use of "'punish' countries" made me imagine a world where improving this score gets taken seriously by the peoples of the world, leading to countries gradually becoming more rectangular over time, and many terrible wars along the way.
- pavel_lishin 10y agoAlternatively, an era of peace and cultural exchange as countries agree to swap territories to become more rectangular, leading to an influx of new immigrants to both countries and greater understanding that this cultural mixing brings. But yeah, probably bloodshed and war.
- clock_tower 10y agoThis reminds me of Paradox's strategy games, where players routinely complain about "bordergore" and fight wars to make the map look neater...
- mikeash 10y agoThat's great, never heard of that before. When I search for that term, the first hit is a Reddit thread where the first commenter expresses his desire to "drop-kick" people who do it. Strong emotions! Maybe we can create this world after all. I wonder how many actual wars in the past have been started because someone didn't like how the border looked on a map. It has to be non-zero.
- niftich 10y agoGood catch, seems they're using low-resolution outlines for small countries like San Marino, Nauru, Vatican... Actual outlines: Nauru: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Nauru_map_english.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Nauru_ma... San Marino: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/San_Marino_relief_map-fr.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/San_Mari... Vatican: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Vatican_City_map.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Vatican_...
- clort 10y agoAlso Sint Maarten is the southern half of a small island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sint_Maarten-CIA_WFB_Map.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sint_Maarten-CIA_WFB_Map....
- jandrese 10y agoSome people have too much time on their hands.
- pavel_lishin 10y agoI agree; they really shouldn't spend their time leaving disparaging comments of other peoples' hobbies.
- benten10 10y agoSeriously! I wish I'd rather done an analysis of countries' shapes, and a measure of their rectagularity, viewed by hundreds of thousands/millions of people online than made this comment, where all I do is agree with you against the annoying snarkiness of the grandparent! On a different note, agree with one of the higher level comments. Egypt doesn't look as rectangular as other countries: perhaps it's the country whose concavity and convexity are best cancelled? Edit: Co-incidentally, the comment I was referring to was yours, parent post. I was unaware when originally posting.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- mnw21cam 10y agoSaying someone has way too much time is a compliment, not a criticism.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- pavel_lishin 10y agoI've literally never heard that phrased as a compliment.
- mnw21cam 10y agoI wish I had as much free time as that.
- SteveCoast 10y agoColorado wins
- a-priori 10y agoAnother example is Saskatchewan, Canada. Like Colorado, its borders, on all four sides, are defined by latitudes and longitudes.
- niftich 10y agoSaskatchewan actually has an unusual border on its east with Manitoba, in which a series of north-running meridians are interrupted by west-running jogs. This newspaper piece [1] reflects on the story behind this boundary. [1] http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/why-the-zigzag-between-sask-and-man/article4202831/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/why-the-zigzag-betwee...
- jessriedel 10y agoBut the curvature of the Earth means Colorado is closer to a rectangle :)
- jjazwiecki 10y agoMy hypothesis is that New York is the best-shaped state because it's not too rectangular, and not to squiggly. Got a good balance of both.
- drivers99 10y agoFun fact: Colorado isn't a perfect rectangle (besides the lines of longitude converging). It's legally defined as straight lines between certain points that surveyors tried to make straight, but didn't get it exactly right. For example, see this part of the western border: https://goo.gl/maps/BKgwJ4bMfjF2 https://goo.gl/maps/BKgwJ4bMfjF2 http://geology.utah.gov/map-pub/survey-notes/glad-you-asked/kink-in-utahs-border/ http://geology.utah.gov/map-pub/survey-notes/glad-you-asked/... Another kink in the souther border: https://www.google.com/maps/@36.988568,-106.87603,12z https://www.google.com/maps/@36.988568,-106.87603,12z Credit to this blog: http://www.howderfamily.com/blog/colorado-not-rectangle/ http://www.howderfamily.com/blog/colorado-not-rectangle/
- TheRealPomax 10y agoWow, what's going on with the Netherlands
- mrweasel 10y agoThe Netherlands have two islands in the Caribbean that is technically no different than any other "county" of the Netherlands.
- mikeash 10y agoIt looks like a similar thing happened with the USA, except worse because whatever Pacific territories it included got attached to the east side, making it take the long way around.
- jhugg 10y agoAleutian islands wrapping around? Marshal islands?
- mikeash 10y agoAh yes, I believe it is the Aleutians. It's hard to really see it well, but it looks like the blob on the right side is at the same latitude as the end of the chain on the left side. I assume the "edge of the world" for this purpose was the 180th meridian, which would leave some of them on the "wrong side." Looking again, I see that Russia and Fiji also suffer from this problem, and those are the other two countries divided by that line.
- clort 10y agowhich are these? as far as I understood (I lived in Sint Maarten for a couple of years once) the Netherlands Antilles are colonies only, unlike the French islands (Martinique and Guadeloupe mainly, but St Barts and St Martin too) which are overseas departments of France, and also considered part of EU.
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- jpindar 10y agoI wonder how many of those are due to pairs or rivers or mountain ranges that tend to lie parallel to each other, or to rivers that tend to be at right angles to a coastline?
- etatoby 10y agoI was kind of disappointed that this post isn't about artificial borders that look like straight latitudinal or longitudinal lines. Those kinds of borders are quite common and I've always thought they say a lot about a country and its past.
- JumpCrisscross 10y agoWhat do they say?
- jacquesm 10y agoNatural or artificial borders, rough date of creation of the border (straighter -> more recent).
- frostburg 10y agoSomeone drew them on a map with a ruler, often from a great distance, I assume.
- dragonwriter 10y agoMostly that there was a conflict (possibly merely political rather than military) that was settled by people who didn't live near the disputed border.
- andrepd 10y agoNot necessarily. For example, these borders exist more often in deserts, for instance (see Sahara and Arizona for instance).
- dragonwriter 10y agoArizona's not a country, so not quite germane (unless you are talking about its southern border, which is clearly an example of the effect suggested.) In the case of the borders among countries in the Sahara, my understanding is that lots of those were disputed borders settled by people pretty remote from the areas with the straight borders, so I'm not sure they provide a counterexample. "It's a desert" may increase the likelihood that decisions get made by people living far out of the region (since it reduces the number of people living close by), though.
- Isamu 10y agoYou mean xkcd hasn't covered this already?
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoLove to see a world map tessalated this way!
- Analemma_ 10y agoI'm surprised Portugal didn't score higher. One day in the car I randomly asked myself the same question of "which country is the most rectangular", and Portugal was the first one I thought of. Is it because the Azores were included? Would like to see the rank if they had only the mainland.
- _pferreir_ 10y agoMy exact thought. But I'm Portuguese, so I'm biased.
- markcerqueira 10y agoCampeões!! Campeões!! Nós somos campeões!!
- oneloop 10y agoPortugal is the most fanatical country that I've ever seen when it comes to football. It's impossible to mention the country's name without some moron jumping in and mentioning football.
- zymhan 10y agoPolandball comics have been on the Portugal-is-a-rectangle trail for a while now: https://www.reddit.com/r/polandball/comments/300b86/portugal/ https://www.reddit.com/r/polandball/comments/300b86/portugal...
- foliveira 10y agoIncluding Azores definitely affected the final result. It's weird that other countries didn't have their islands include though
- flurdy 10y agoOthers are also affected by islands and territories, see France with French Guyana etc, Norway with Svalbard etc. France is quite a square country if you only consider its mainland so it is an odd choice to include non mainland areas but I guess it is a difficult greyzone on what to include and not.
- bbctol 10y agoIt's a good metric, but I do feel there's something slightly different being said in human terms when we say a country is "rectangular." Turkey seems to have sharper, closer to 90 degree angles than other countries that may overlap a rectangle more. I suspect what's really going on, psychologically, is that Turkey looks much more like a rectangle than it does any other basic shape: I would never described Macedonia as rectangular, despite its considerable overlap, because it's "oval." Kenya's a pentagon before it's anything else, and so on.
- zem 10y agoright. Côte d'Ivoire in particular has a very high score while "looking" nothing like a rectangle
- dnautics 10y agothis metric is kind of poor. What about something like the area ratio of the biggest inscribed rectangle to the smallest circumscribed rectangle that has edges parallel to the selected inscribed rectangle.
- justinpombrio 10y agoThat measures nothing but outliers: consider that changing anything between the two rectangles would leave that metric unchanged.
- bckygldstn 10y agoIt seems like it would be an excellent method if you could address the outlier issue though. One approach would be to relax the rectangles, so the outer one only has to circumscribe 95% of the country's area. A similar approach is used in biology to define animal territories: A kernel density estimate is taken of historical animal positions and thresholded, rather than a minimum convex polygon.
- icodestuff 10y agoI like this metric better, although I'm wondering if the rectangles should be similar, not just having parallel edges. That should put Turkey and Portugal up at the top, if you remove the islands.
- fiatjaf 10y agoCorrelate with economic development!
- kidzik 10y agoI've just checked with Gini and GDP per capita. No correlations :/
- notsureifwant 10y agoThere's a fair amount of research in economic history on almost exactly this topic. Two recent papers http://www.nber.org/papers/w12328.pdf http://www.nber.org/papers/w12328.pdf and https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4s_WKe-US99LV9XVTNVNzFxYW8/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4s_WKe-US99LV9XVTNVNzFxYW8... have looked at how measures of the artificial-ness of borders (how straight they are, how often they cut through the territory of ethnic groups, ratio of a country's area to the area of its convex hull) are correlated with various measures of welfare (e.g. GDP/capita, lack of conflict). The papers are often controversial because they often claim something approaching causality (see recent Twitter war https://twitter.com/bill_easterly/status/753252113510268928 https://twitter.com/bill_easterly/status/753252113510268928).
- fiatjaf 10y agoWho are these people discussing on Twitter? Are they the researchers who publish papers on the topic? (I do not mean these same papers you linked to, just asking if they are serious academics.)
- notsureifwant 10y agoEasterly is an economist at NYU (who published one of the earliest papers on the subject), I'm not sure about the others. However the discussion is a good representation of some of the debate that's gone on regarding interpreting correlations between regular-ness of borders and GDP (i.e. is it that having artificial borders was disruptive, or was it that borders were drawn artificially in areas that had fundamental characteristics which have caused them to have lower GDP today).
- schneidmaster 10y agoHuh, the US is 169 out of 208. I would've guessed it at a good bit higher but I forgot Hawaii and (especially) Alaska are kinda hanging out there screwing up the ideal rectangle.
- temuze 10y agoWould be nice to apply this to gerrymandered congressional districts.
- andrepd 10y agoI'm not sure this algorithm is the best fit for our natural intuition of a rectangular country.
- dkopi 10y agoIt's interesting to judge conflicts based on this ranking as well. Check out #55 (Palestine) and #175 (Israel)
- hyperpallium 10y agoI have a theory that newer borders more rectangular, whereas older borders follow natural wiggly features like rivers, similar to newer cities' roads being more rectangular, whereas older roads are more higgly-piggly organic. The older ones grew; the newer were planned. You can see it east-to-west in the USA states' borders.
- simonsmithies 10y agoWhat's wrong with New Zealand?
- jwilk 10y agoLongitude overflow.
- simonsmithies 10y agoWhat's wrong with New Zealand? Looks even tinier than usual in Safari on iOS.
- tobr 10y agoThese are not rectangles though. The projection has severly stretched many of the countries. Combined with the tilted angles, that should mean the corners of these "rectangles" aren't really 90°.
- mynewtb 10y agoSite is currently down, please tell me they used locally fitted projections, not Mercator?
- rspeer 10y agoThey used an equirectangular projection, because rectangles. But that means that some of these rotated rectangles are more like parallelograms when you look at them in another way. Mercator actually would have been a good choice because it preserves local angles. Not sure why you'd be so opposed to it in this case. For this purpose, relative sizes don't matter at all. And I don't think a local projection would clarify anything. Countries can get pretty big and non-local. If you strive for complete geometric accuracy on the scale of, say, Canada, the idea of a "rectangle" breaks down because there are no parallel lines on Earth, and four right angles don't bring you back to the orientation where you started.
- theoh 10y agoThe site has run out of bandwidth allocation, so I'm only guessing what the metric is from the comments here... I'd like to see it compared with a "parallelogramness" measure, based on rotating calipers. Rectangularity would be a special case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotating_calipers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotating_calipers
- filvdg 10y agoFor people who like complex borders https://www.google.be/maps/place/Baarle-Hertog/ https://www.google.be/maps/place/Baarle-Hertog/ This is a Belgian city enclave within the Netherlands with enclaves of the Netherlands within its borders
- djsumdog 10y agoWow. I feel like there should be a CGP Grey video about this. He has one about London vs the City of London and the weird US/Canada border. Someone also tried to tell me Norwood, Ohio is the largest city within a city (an enclave city), but I can't find a source on that anywhere.
- zach 10y agoNewark is completely surrounded by Fremont (California) and has over 40,000 residents and is over 13 square miles in area, so if it's not the largest, it's at least near the top. If we discount natural borders like the Pacific Ocean, Santa Monica borders only Los Angeles and has twice as many residents.
- diego 10y agoNot far from Fremont, Piedmont is completely surrounded by Oakland. 1.6 square miles, 10k residents.
- dwpdwpdwpdwpdwp 10y agoThe City of Los Angeles has a really interesting shape: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Los+Angeles,+CA/@34.0911823,-118.471299,10z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x80c2c75ddc27da13:0xe22fdf6f254608f4 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Los+Angeles,+CA/@34.091182...
- CalRobert 10y agoLos Angeles has very strange borders. West Hollywood and Beverly Hills are independent enclaves, and it has an odd tendril stretching down to Long Beach. I remember being delighted when Google Maps started outlining city borders - I had always wondered exactly what LA's looked like. Another fun one is San Diego, which does indeed touch Mexico, but to get from downtown to the border and stay within city limits you'll have to get on a boat and stay within a narrow band of water stretching down the bay to San Ysidro. See: https://www.sandiego.gov/sites/default/files/legacy//planning/programs/mapsua/pdf/cplancd2.pdf https://www.sandiego.gov/sites/default/files/legacy//plannin... https://www.maptechnica.com/city-map/San+Diego/CA/0666000 https://www.maptechnica.com/city-map/San+Diego/CA/0666000
- q1t 10y agoDead already :\ hn effect in work
- jwilk 10y ago509 Bandwidth Limit Exceeded Here's an archived copy: https://archive.is/cRkgb https://archive.is/cRkgb
- ihaveajob 10y agoThe site is out of bandwidth, so this might help: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://pappubahry.com/misc/rectangles/ http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
- zumu 10y agoI wonder if the overall rectangularness of the African countries is evidence of a bias for retangualarness by the map making colonial powers.
- LeifCarrotson 10y agoEgypt and Equatorial Guinea are clearly on latitude/longitude lines, but the rest look pretty random. I am actually surprised that it's as nonlinear as it is - go take a look at a map of Africa, not much is actually rectangular! There are a lot of straight lines (which would be another interesting metric to study-the countries most closely bounded by an irregular polygon) in several interior borders on the Sahara, as well as Namibia and its neighbors. But none except Equatorial Guinea are really rectangular. The state borders, on the other hand, are often quadrilaterals. Perfect scores to Wyoming and Colorado, and near-perfect for many others.
- shekhar101 10y agoI read somewhere that manmade boundaries can be clearly identified. They are mostly straight lines on maps. It makes more sense after reading this article. This is the reason why so many African countries have such sharp boundaries. Colony masters divided them amongst themselves, ignoring natural resource division, people and ethnicity of new countries. This has led to so many conflicts among these countries as well. I might be wrong, but I think this happened to middle-east as well.
- gavinpc 10y ago169/208? Reagan would never have let this happen. #makeamericarectangularagain
- D_Alex 10y agoEq. Guinea at #18 looks wrong...the rectangle seems too large. It is pretty rectangular, about as much as Egypt to my eye...
- thomasahle 10y agoI wonder how similar the result would have been with this metric: Score = area of the symmetric difference between country and the rectangle maximizing the score.
- known 10y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_separatist_movements_in_Asia#India https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_separatist_mo...
- laurent123456 10y agoThe UK map, unlike France or Spain, doesn't include the oversea territories.
- ProfChronos 10y agoFunny to see that France is only 134th while French refer to their country as "The Exagon" (metropolitan France) - 3 ground borders and 3 sea borders. The expression was coined in the 1860s by school reformists and got popular after the Franco-German War in 1870 when Alsace was lost. To my knowledge French are the only ones to define their country with a geometrical form
- lagadu 10y agoPortuguese people also generally see our country as a rectangle too. And no, the islands don't count.