pouët.net

hoover: it does indeed, but fortunately countries aren't actually circle shaped :D

I get where you're coming from though - but it's a bit wrong. Think of a square, 1m square, so 4m of edge. Break it into 4 quarters, each 0.5m x 0.5m. Still 1m square, but now it has 0.5 * 16 = 8m of edge.

Same thing with a fractal. Each time you iterate (or look a little closer), the 'circumference' might double, but the area might stay the same.

jcl: closest I can see to the centre of canada is the town of Yellowknife. Here's a picture of it.

Yes. Have you looked at a map of Canada?



Well, I can't know for sure, but I guess they would look at the math and go: "Hey, it's 2.2 times easier to be near a beach in Canada than in Spain!"

No wait, actually I think they'd go "Hey, it's 2.5 times easier to be near a beach in Canada than in Spain!"

Haha, I see what you did there!

Hey guys, I don't know about the relative size of foo or bar, but I would just like to mention that coastline != beach. At least not a beach you would like for Sun and bath

psonice: if lakes count, then the whole argument is flawed (it is, for many other reasons, but let's forget about that), since coastline length won't include those :-)

For the record: In the original numbers I was counting the area of lakes but not their shorelines. :-)

Really, you cannot measure the length of a coastline, all those numbers are bogus. Here's an article on that:

How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Statistical Self-Similarity and Fractional Dimension

Or even better:

Coastline paradox

Well that's all very nice, but assuming
a) the fractal dimension of coastlines is constant over planet earth
b) the coastlines have been measured at the same scale
(neither of which seem a strech)
we can still make RELATIVE comparisons, and the argument still stands!

WHAT ELSE YOU GOT, BITCHES?

go make a demo about it?

Most boring demo ever

Oh im sure the one doing the coastline of norway (in a demo) would win a prize at solskogen.

clever comparison mr. ralph