There's a lot of skew towards being the smallest of the small. Even though there is only 10,000 mi^2 between Vatican and Lebanon, Vatican is about 35 placements lower. You could stick Vatican next to Vietnam (rank 65, 331,000 mi^2) and still end up on this list
Same for me. Either the initial premise for the quiz is wrong or the answers are wrong in a couple of cases. The quiz suggest two small countries that share a border such as Rwanda and Burundi but somehow you included Monaco (borders with France and Italy), San Marino and Vatican City (both Italy) and I don't regard either France or Italy as being small bordering countries. Can you explain where I'm going wrong?
The Ivory Coast is larger than Italy. Even the two "small" countries of Rwanda and Burundi are each only a little less than a tenth of Italy's area, while Vatican City is around 50,000 times smaller than each of them.
I suggest 'inverting' the average rank so that 1 is the smallest country (this would also make it coherent with the instructions as they ask for the lowest average)
Italy + Vatican area = 301,340 km squared (that's just the area of Italy, I didn't bother including Vatican tbh!) =AVERAGE 301,340/2 = 150,670 km squared.
Senegal + Gambia area = 196,712 + 11,300 = 208,012 km squared. =AVERAGE 208,012/2 = 104,006 km squared.
Can someone please explain where my maths is wrong? Is it the sea area of Italy or something?
EDIT: Oh, I see it's the RANK that matters, not the average land area. Still Senegal/Gambia must be very close. It's a very weird system that excludes them considering they've nearly 60,000km2 less area than Italy/Vatican. Should be done on average land area of the two countries imo, so as not to include big countries that border tiny countries.
me too. That Mercator projection has got us all screwed up. I watched a video the other day that showed how we could build a road around the world and how long it would take to drive it. Essentially, they said it would take 7 days to go from Cape Town to Cairo, and then another 7 days to go from Cairo all the way to the eastern tip of Russia. Looking at a Mercator map, that seems completely ridiculous. Yet here we are.
The weirdness of the included countries isn't because of the Mercator projection. It's because the methodology takes the ranks of the countries out of 196 rather than their combined land area. For instance, the land area of Italy is twice as large as the combined area of Guetamala and El Salvador. So you have to think of only the rank each country has when taking this quiz more than actual land area.
Well it’s also because of the Mercator. If you were looking at a Mercator than Benin and Togo certainly look like they fit. The methodology just adds more weirdness to it.
You're actually not looking for smallest countries bordering each other but tiny countries bordering to a rather small one. Thus leading to the strange effect that Italy appears twice on that list, but the Baltics don't...
Yes, that would be the more logical way to find small countries that border each other. This methodology tells us more about the distribution of land area of countries. For instance, you could fit both El Salvador and Guatemala into just Italy. Obviously El Salvador and Guatemala are a smaller pair of countries than Italy and the Vatican, but the methodology of the quiz just makes it about the rank and distribution than actual "smallness". As is, it is probably a bit easier since we have all practiced the country sized rankings from those quizzes.
The ranking system makes it more of guessing tiny countries with land borders, then guessing their smallest bordering countries. Perhaps ranking pairs by sum or product of areas would give a set of top twenty pairs which are actually small
Then stop fussing about it and just let the people decide what to call their own country. Or start referring to Greece as FOROG so that you don't seem biased.
Am I missing something in the rules? What about Togo (56.785km2), Benin (112.622 km2), Ghana (238.533 km2) and Burkina Faso (274 000km2), all smaller than italy (301 338km2) and bordering at least one of the others?
Whether or not you personally believe it is, JetPunk consistently recognizes it as such. Same with Taiwan (which is recognized), Palestine (which is not recognized), etc.
Wouldn't smallest combined surface area be a more intuitive metric? It probably wouldn't change the list all that much, but somehow a fact like "these two countries together have an area of 30,000 km2" has a bit more real-world significance than "these two countries would be the 132th largest country on average".
Turkey and Azerbaijan, Palestinian Territories and Egypt Western Saharan Territories and Algeria also Iran and Armenia,Burkina Faso and Togo, Niger and Benin, Congo Brazzaville and Angola,Tanzania and Malawi,Eswatini and Mozambique and Afghanistan and China,Chile and Peru, (some of them might be on the quiz but if some of the above are not,I would recommend adding them,thanks) Also France and Netherlands (Saint Martin island split)
There's a number of West African countries that should be included (Benin/Togo, Senegal/Gambia, Equatorial Guinea/Gabon, Guinea/Guinea Bassau), and if we're counting small countries within/bordering larger ones I think Lesotho/South Africa/Eswatini/Mozambique should be included.
Because Indonesia is the 14th largest country by land area, and averaging their rank with Brunei (164th) or East Timor (154th) would not put them on the list.
Lots of people are confused about the ranking system - can QM at least give his reasoning for using the average rank of the countries rather than the average area of the countries please? I've marked this comment as a suggestion for QM in the hope that there will at least be an explanation. I'm sure there is a good one.
Senegal + Gambia area = 196,712 + 11,300 = 208,012 km squared. =AVERAGE 208,012/2 = 104,006 km squared.
Can someone please explain where my maths is wrong? Is it the sea area of Italy or something?
EDIT: Oh, I see it's the RANK that matters, not the average land area. Still Senegal/Gambia must be very close. It's a very weird system that excludes them considering they've nearly 60,000km2 less area than Italy/Vatican. Should be done on average land area of the two countries imo, so as not to include big countries that border tiny countries.
The lowest average rank gives the largest countries. I think it should be changed to "highest average rank"
Guess i'll never be able to understand civilisation .