Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The True Size of Africa (2015)

kai.sub.blue

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 226 posts

Re: The True Size of Africa (2015)

#11

Post by Turing_Machine »

darkwater wrote: post #5
mikestew wrote: post #4

The edited title is incorrect, in that it is a comparison with countries . How big is Africa compared to Asia? Okay, there’s one comparison with Europe (scroll down). Otherwise it’s a matter of how many countries one could cram in there. Of course, Africa already has a bunch of countries, so I guess I just didn’t get it. Comparing to, say, North America or something would be a better visualization for me.

> A veritable shitstorm of responses latched onto the tiniest of tiny details. People complained “you missed Ibiza”, “how could you make Belgium the same color as the Netherlands” “and on and on and on...

The fact that countries and continents are two different things is not a "tiny detail".

If you're comparing continents, Asia is larger than Africa, and North America is nearly as large.

If you're comparing countries, the largest African country is Algeria, which ranks 10th.

Re: The True Size of Africa (2015)

#12

Post by aksss »

idatum wrote: post #3

Projections can be tricky. Early memory I have in college: I walked into my professor's office and she had a curious looking map on her wall. It had Australia at the center and the US was distorted and upside down. As someone from North America (US) this was a nice lesson in perspective.

So too with a polar view of the planet: https://www.grida.no/resources/7845

Re: The True Size of Africa (2015)

#15

Post by stoolpigeon »

One of the strangest feelings I've had is flying from Amsterdam to Johannesburg. It's a super long trip and so mentally I was expecting jet lag. But there was no time change. The season flipped but the time of day was right in sync with everyone back home in Budapest.

Re: The True Size of Africa (2015)

#16

Post by witherk »

jlos wrote: post #13

Why isn't Canada or Russia, the two largest countries by land mass, included?

Probably because it's trying to convince you that Africa is really huge, so including other really big countries would be counterproductive. I guess you could argue that Canada and Russia both have a lot of tundra that no one wants to live on so that land doesn't count or something.

Re: The True Size of Africa (2015)

#18

Post by sandworm101 »

jlos wrote: post #13

Why isn't Canada or Russia, the two largest countries by land mass, included?

Canada is tricky because of all the islands in the north. It isnt a solid blob. Russia is tricky becuase it is so long. I dont think it and the US would nest nicely inside the africa outline. And we cannot ever have a map without thr USA center stage. Also with russia, exactly which boarder should we use? It's probably better to just not enter into that debate.

Re: The True Size of Africa (2015)

#19

Post by joe_the_user »

darkwater wrote: post #5
mikestew wrote: post #4

The edited title is incorrect, in that it is a comparison with countries . How big is Africa compared to Asia? Okay, there’s one comparison with Europe (scroll down). Otherwise it’s a matter of how many countries one could cram in there. Of course, Africa already has a bunch of countries, so I guess I just didn’t get it. Comparing to, say, North America or something would be a better visualization for me.

> A veritable shitstorm of responses latched onto the tiniest of tiny details. People complained “you missed Ibiza”, “how could you make Belgium the same color as the Netherlands” “and on and on and on...

No, the parent makes a good point that stacking countries insides different continents doesn't give one much of a comparison. The visualization winds-up more "factoid" than fact.

Africa is approximately three times the size of Europe, 2/3 the size of Asia, 5/4 the size of North America and so forth. Obviously it's a large place but so is every continent.

Edit: This isn't to take away from the point that historically, the size, importance, history and so forth of Africa have been neglected. But it seems like this should be dealt with more holistically than the infographic size comparison approach.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent#Area_and_population

Re: The True Size of Africa (2015)

#20

Post by jobigoud »

stoolpigeon wrote: post #15

One of the strangest feelings I've had is flying from Amsterdam to Johannesburg. It's a super long trip and so mentally I was expecting jet lag. But there was no time change. The season flipped but the time of day was right in sync with everyone back home in Budapest.

That's exactly why it's one of my favorite destinations. Take off in European winter in the evening, land in summer in the morning, no jet lag, beautiful landscapes, it's awesome.
Post reply on HN