this 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.
The rectangularness of countries
31–40 of 150 posts
Re: The rectangularness of countries
#32Correlate with economic development!
Re: The rectangularness of countries
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
The 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 i…
There'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.
That measure (call it boxability) is a bit harsh, though. The US shouldn't have to pay that much for Hawaii.
Re: The rectangularness of countries
#34Huh, 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.
Re: The rectangularness of countries
#35Colorado wins
My 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.
Re: The rectangularness of countries
#36Neat! 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.
Good 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_ma... San Marino: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/San_Mari... Vatican: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Vatican_...
Also Sint Maarten is the southern half of a small island
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sint_Maarten-CIA_WFB_Map....
Re: The rectangularness of countries
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do they say?
Mostly that there was a conflict (possibly merely political rather than military) that was settled by people who didn't live near the disputed border.
Not necessarily. For example, these borders exist more often in deserts, for instance (see Sahara and Arizona for instance).
Re: The rectangularness of countries
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
The 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 i…
There'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.
For 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.
Re: The rectangularness of countries
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Netherlands have two islands in the Caribbean that is technically no different than any other "county" of the Netherlands.
It 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.
Aleutian islands wrapping around? Marshal islands?
Re: The rectangularness of countries
#40Would be nice to apply this to gerrymandered congressional districts.