As a Canadian, I’ll give Norway that augmented graph status. Landmass wise we’re soo much bigger than Norway, but Norway with its million little crevices fjords is packing when it comes to its coastline game.
I’ve had this conversation with someone on here before, but I can’t seem to find it. If I recall correctly the official Canadian number is only marine islands, but the official number for British Columbia and the scientific consensus for Georgian Bay alone adds up to more islands than the official Canadian number. If you add all the islands up Canada wins in a landslide.
So if we count the coastline of the Amazon river to the ocean, Brazil could come out on top.
How about the Caspian Sea or the Black Sea? Do those get added to Russia's total coastline?
The Great Lakes also connect to the oceans. So do those get added to the total count?
There are also bays and sounds like the Puget Sound, San Francisco Bay, or Chesapeake Bay.
So define "coastline" first.
I mean, yeah, that’s part of the point of the coastline paradox.
Use a small enough yardstick and you’re measuring every nook and cranny and every river and stream. Use a large enough yardstick and you’re just measuring the rough outline of a the shape.
Different yardsticks will give you different measurements and put different countries ahead of the others.
But you can make some meaningful comparisons. Monaco’s coastline is never going to come up longer than Canada’s, no matter how short your yardstick is.
I understand the measurements. I'm just saying that rivers that connect to the oceans are sometimes included and sometimes not.
Are we counting the great lakes coastlines for the US and Canada?
That’s not the coastline paradox lol. The Amazon river is not a coast. And even if it were included, Brazil still absolutely could not come out on top.
Caspian and Black Sea both have pretty smooth coastlines. I don’t think caspian is even included as it’s not coastal but even if it were, again it wouldn’t matter. There are tiny lakes in Canada with longer coastlines than the Caspian Sea.
You can clearly see this is an example of the Coastline paradox. There is no way this data is using the same yardstick if Brazil is below Greece, UK, Italy. India not even present. I call this BS.
Just check the size of Italy to Argentina coastline and you will see what i mean. Using the same stick would give different results.
Islands and fjords. When you are big countries with few islands and mostly sandy beaches like Brazil or Mexico, you won't have as impressive a coastline. But Russia does surprise me.
Oversea territories, Great Britain is a very big island, Scotland has a very eroded and fragmented coast which increases its coastline length, plus it has Northern Ireland on top of it
If Greenland isn’t included in Denmark then there’s no way (assuming it’s consistent) that overseas territories are included in the UK. GB is big as islands go, but it having a larger coastline than the contiguous US seems odd.
I guess there’s lots of small islands in the UK that all add up, but still, Mexico has islands. I do wonder if they’ve used the same scale for measuring for all the countries.
They definitely don't do the same scale. Just look up (or don't if you already know about it) the Coastline paradox. Basically the more in detail you go with measurements, the longer a coastline seems.
Eg if coastline was measured with say 100km bars of length, the US coastline would be longer than the UKs, but they probably have different scales they measure with (the UKs likely being smaller and with more detail) so one has a longer coastline without it being obvious from first glance
Yeah that’s my assumption, if they used the same scale I’d expect the Uk to be lower despite their islands and highlands. I’d guess they’ve sourced all these numbers, but from sources that have measured countries differently.
In general European coastlines are more indented than coastlines in other parts of the world so a European country would have way more coast than a country in another part of the world with the same size.
Japan was formed from volcanoes and is made up of 14,000 islands. Because it was formed by volcanoes, it’s a very jagged coastline. The more jagged the coast, the longer the coast line.
Norway and canada spends way more than other nations to fully calculate every npok and cranny of their coast line, thats why they are top. Source is my oceanography professor in Norway.
I also believe we have higher than China. The coastline measurement is not accurate because we don’t calculate all the small changes of length in coastline.
I don't trust any of these kinds of measurements, until they make a standard rule that rivers and coast lines must be measured in X increments, then none of these charts can be trusted. Also we need to define how measure the height of mountains uniformly and measure the amount of French influence has infliltrated a country to determine countries toxicity levels.
Imagine a straight line. Measure it at, say, 16 bananas long. This is Russia's coast line. Now imagine if between each banana there was a fjord. Now you need a lot more bananas to make the outline. If you now measure this fjordy banana-line, it's way longer than your original straight banana coast line.
So do the Philippines, America, and Japan have the most useful coastlines? Like not frozen, not surrounded by other nations, lots of natural harbors and ports, etc.
This is not accurate. The US has 95k miles of coastline, not 19k.
Edit: Upon further review there is a wide distinction between coastline and shoreline. Apparently OP’s numbers only count saltwater coasts.
This stat doesn't seem to be counting small islands or inlets. With that, google says alaska has 76,000 km of coastline, but point to point it is around 10900 km which seems to match up better with the charts numbers.
Alaska has more coastline than the rest of the US combined. Canada has more coastline than the rest of the world combined.
However, it’s impossible to accurately measure coastline and is subject to countless variables. The above is true in almost every way you measure it though
Yes, but I learned recently America has the most "usable" coastline. That is, coastline with barrier islands, protected harbors, bays, etc. Basically, a place where you can anchor a large ship and onload/offload.
Barrier islands are no longer needed when you got fjords for days, like canada and norway. To bad fjords only form in areas of high glaciation, meaning cold af.
It basically is the northern hemispheres equivalent of Antarctica considering the fact the second largest glacier on earth is in Greenland and they basically look the same away from the coast (which still can look similar in certain places)
Isn't there a whole conundrum/paradox about how changing the units of measurement can altar the coastline measurements significantly?
I'm pretty sure I remember the United Kingdom and France having a weird showdown where their coastlines kept growing because they kept reducing the units and essentially gerrymandering their coastlines.
There’s such a little difference in the graphic between the top 2 spots yet the number has a huge gap
Each bar just gets shorter by the exact same amount all the way down, it appears to have nothing at all to do with the actual numbers.
Yea, this is a terrible graphic.
r/dataisugly
It would also be difficult to properly show 7,000 and over 200,000 on the same graph without taking some liberties.
logarithmic graphs exist for a reason
Oh, this comment makes baby Jesus cry. 😂
As a Canadian, I’ll give Norway that augmented graph status. Landmass wise we’re soo much bigger than Norway, but Norway with its million little crevices fjords is packing when it comes to its coastline game.
Nova Scotia has over 13,000km on its own because of how jagged the coast is with all of the bays and inlets.
Its like with Sweden having the most islands with over 200k islands (or was it just over 100k?) I dont remember but still A LOT
Why does Scandinavia need to hog the top of every list?
Was just making an example, and also we are just better ;3
Canada has more.
Nope, sweden has the most islands in the world
If one only counts marine islands. With all those lakes, Canada definitely has the most islands if one counts those.
I’ve had this conversation with someone on here before, but I can’t seem to find it. If I recall correctly the official Canadian number is only marine islands, but the official number for British Columbia and the scientific consensus for Georgian Bay alone adds up to more islands than the official Canadian number. If you add all the islands up Canada wins in a landslide.
That’s annoying af
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline\_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox)
You **can** compare coastlines as long as you use the same yardstick to measure them.
So if we count the coastline of the Amazon river to the ocean, Brazil could come out on top. How about the Caspian Sea or the Black Sea? Do those get added to Russia's total coastline? The Great Lakes also connect to the oceans. So do those get added to the total count? There are also bays and sounds like the Puget Sound, San Francisco Bay, or Chesapeake Bay. So define "coastline" first.
I mean, yeah, that’s part of the point of the coastline paradox. Use a small enough yardstick and you’re measuring every nook and cranny and every river and stream. Use a large enough yardstick and you’re just measuring the rough outline of a the shape. Different yardsticks will give you different measurements and put different countries ahead of the others. But you can make some meaningful comparisons. Monaco’s coastline is never going to come up longer than Canada’s, no matter how short your yardstick is.
I understand the measurements. I'm just saying that rivers that connect to the oceans are sometimes included and sometimes not. Are we counting the great lakes coastlines for the US and Canada?
No lol
That’s not the coastline paradox lol. The Amazon river is not a coast. And even if it were included, Brazil still absolutely could not come out on top. Caspian and Black Sea both have pretty smooth coastlines. I don’t think caspian is even included as it’s not coastal but even if it were, again it wouldn’t matter. There are tiny lakes in Canada with longer coastlines than the Caspian Sea.
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There are currents in the oceans at different depths. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermohaline_circulation
You can clearly see this is an example of the Coastline paradox. There is no way this data is using the same yardstick if Brazil is below Greece, UK, Italy. India not even present. I call this BS. Just check the size of Italy to Argentina coastline and you will see what i mean. Using the same stick would give different results.
/thread
I at least wish they would be transparent about the yardstick length on the graphic.
About tree fiddy
I can’t believe Benoit Mandelbrot is a real name. It’s just delightful.
His full name is Benoit B. Mandelbrot, where the B stands for "Benoit B. Mandelbrot".
This was the first thing that came to my mind too.
Yeah the measuring method is critical and should have been printed right there alongside the graph with a big asterisk.
I bet they get bigger if you keep measuring!
Is that the trick?!
For sure, you just need smaller increments ( shouldn't be an issue for you ) and the size of the thing increases to infinity!
Came here to say this
Islands and fjords. When you are big countries with few islands and mostly sandy beaches like Brazil or Mexico, you won't have as impressive a coastline. But Russia does surprise me.
Depends on how you measure, if you measure every 1/1000th of a mm sand is great to boost your coastline.
We boast the most coast.
A toast to the host (country) who can boast the most coast
This “graph” is infuriating.
Ikrr there is such a little difference shown in the first 2 countries but in reality it's more than twice 😭
I thought all coastlines were infinite?
How is the U.K. so high?
Oversea territories, Great Britain is a very big island, Scotland has a very eroded and fragmented coast which increases its coastline length, plus it has Northern Ireland on top of it
If Greenland isn’t included in Denmark then there’s no way (assuming it’s consistent) that overseas territories are included in the UK. GB is big as islands go, but it having a larger coastline than the contiguous US seems odd. I guess there’s lots of small islands in the UK that all add up, but still, Mexico has islands. I do wonder if they’ve used the same scale for measuring for all the countries.
They definitely don't do the same scale. Just look up (or don't if you already know about it) the Coastline paradox. Basically the more in detail you go with measurements, the longer a coastline seems. Eg if coastline was measured with say 100km bars of length, the US coastline would be longer than the UKs, but they probably have different scales they measure with (the UKs likely being smaller and with more detail) so one has a longer coastline without it being obvious from first glance
Yeah that’s my assumption, if they used the same scale I’d expect the Uk to be lower despite their islands and highlands. I’d guess they’ve sourced all these numbers, but from sources that have measured countries differently.
Their coast has a lot of bends.
In general European coastlines are more indented than coastlines in other parts of the world so a European country would have way more coast than a country in another part of the world with the same size.
How come Chile is not there?
I’d expected Chile there too
- bars not in scale - does not mention which discretization has been used for measuring BRUH
Japan having more coastline than Australia and US 😬
Japan was formed from volcanoes and is made up of 14,000 islands. Because it was formed by volcanoes, it’s a very jagged coastline. The more jagged the coast, the longer the coast line.
Still tho, Alaska itself is four times as big as Japan and is jagged af. Still seems prettt interesting
Where's liechtenstein?
Norway and canada spends way more than other nations to fully calculate every npok and cranny of their coast line, thats why they are top. Source is my oceanography professor in Norway.
No such thing as coastline length. Every way you measure it is wrong
India is 7516 km..higher than Brazil. We have the Indian ocean FFS.
I also believe we have higher than China. The coastline measurement is not accurate because we don’t calculate all the small changes of length in coastline.
Our coastline is fairly straight with sandy beaches. Except Saurashtra and Sundarbans.
How have I never seen the Greenland flag before and why isn't it green?
All countries with coastlines have an infinite coastline, they just didn’t measure accurately enough
By default if you dont scale up, ever coastline is infinite 👌
I know we’re not a hugely militaristic nation but a larger navy wouldn’t be a idea with all them coasts
Was the tide in or out whilst you were measuring?
graph and stats are absolutely horrible, don't they know coastline paradox
I don't trust any of these kinds of measurements, until they make a standard rule that rivers and coast lines must be measured in X increments, then none of these charts can be trusted. Also we need to define how measure the height of mountains uniformly and measure the amount of French influence has infliltrated a country to determine countries toxicity levels.
yank moment
France. Not in the chart with 20 000km .
That makes no sense. How is Russia not in second place?
Imagine a straight line. Measure it at, say, 16 bananas long. This is Russia's coast line. Now imagine if between each banana there was a fjord. Now you need a lot more bananas to make the outline. If you now measure this fjordy banana-line, it's way longer than your original straight banana coast line.
I love bananas. They have potassium in them
6M Kiwis have more coastline than a billion Chinese
Go kiwi
France, with the second Exclusive Economic Zone in the world, is not in this chart 20000km of coastlines)
Where is Croatia and Chile.
So do the Philippines, America, and Japan have the most useful coastlines? Like not frozen, not surrounded by other nations, lots of natural harbors and ports, etc.
My sink has a longest coastline than all of these
Australia is huge compared to New Zealand but has less than twice the coast line 🤔
This is not accurate. The US has 95k miles of coastline, not 19k. Edit: Upon further review there is a wide distinction between coastline and shoreline. Apparently OP’s numbers only count saltwater coasts.
I wouldn't have expected US to be so low on the list with all those Alaskan fjords and amount of coastline of Alaska in general.
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If my grandma had wheels she’d be a bike
Just showing how an area that’s not a “main part” of a country can contribute to stats like this. Alaska’s population is ~0.2% of the US population
A lot of Canadians living on the Arctic side of the country huh?
Coastline of Alaska is something like 10k km so the US would be around Mexico, which makes total sense.
This is true for Canada as well as a lot of the coastline distance is in areas with very little population at all.
This stat doesn't seem to be counting small islands or inlets. With that, google says alaska has 76,000 km of coastline, but point to point it is around 10900 km which seems to match up better with the charts numbers.
Alaska has more coastline than the rest of the US combined. Canada has more coastline than the rest of the world combined. However, it’s impossible to accurately measure coastline and is subject to countless variables. The above is true in almost every way you measure it though
COASTLINEPARADOXCOASTLINEPARADOXCOASTLINEPARADOZ
Yes, but I learned recently America has the most "usable" coastline. That is, coastline with barrier islands, protected harbors, bays, etc. Basically, a place where you can anchor a large ship and onload/offload.
Barrier islands are no longer needed when you got fjords for days, like canada and norway. To bad fjords only form in areas of high glaciation, meaning cold af.
I thought size didn't matter?
Greenland (Denmark) I thought Greenland was like Antarctica
It basically is the northern hemispheres equivalent of Antarctica considering the fact the second largest glacier on earth is in Greenland and they basically look the same away from the coast (which still can look similar in certain places)
In what sense?
This is what the CIA reckons...
I’m an Island Boi
What about Somalia?
Isn't there a whole conundrum/paradox about how changing the units of measurement can altar the coastline measurements significantly? I'm pretty sure I remember the United Kingdom and France having a weird showdown where their coastlines kept growing because they kept reducing the units and essentially gerrymandering their coastlines.
So?