

The True Size of Africa (2010) [pdf] - cwan
http://edge.org/documents/Edge-Serpentine-MapsGallery/high-res/Krause.pdf

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Turing_Machine
Africa is a continent, not a country.

An appropriate comparison would be Asia, which is considerably larger than
Africa. North America (which includes Canada and Mexico) is somewhat smaller
than Africa, but not by much.

Russia, Canada, China, the United States, Brazil, Australia, India, Argentina,
and Kazakhstan are all larger than any African country.

~~~
melvinram
The article doesn't say it's a country and an appropriate comparison is one
that puts things into perspective, which this graphic definitely does.

~~~
Turing_Machine
"Puts it into perspective" how?

Africa is a heterogenous continent, with vast numbers of different cultures,
languages, natural resources, climates...

Treating it any kind of unit doesn't make sense. It definitely doesn't make
sense to compare it with unitary countries on any level, and even less sense
to compare it on the basis of geographic size.

Canada is a huge country, but that's not why it's wealthy. The Netherlands is
a tiny country, but that's not why it's wealthy, either.

~~~
melvinram
It's all relative. I live in California, US. I know how big the US is relative
to Cali... so I know how big United States is. I have a point of reference.
Comparing Africa to USA gives me a way to mentally model what the difference
in size means.

Comparing a continent to a country makes sense the same way that you might
compare the size of a child to an adult. They don't have to be the same. You
just know which of the two you are and get a sense of how big the other is.

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gilgoomesh
If we're going to talk "immappancy" where's Alaska? The infographic mentions
"USA" but only displays the continental USA while using the size of the entire
USA (Alaska included) in the calculations.

~~~
ckarmann
There are a few omissions that the infographic does. The more blatant for
Europe is that they left out Scandinavia, and the European part of Russia,
while the text states clearly "all of Europe".

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jacobolus
Original source at edge.org, from 2010: [http://edge.org/documents/Edge-
Serpentine-MapsGallery/high-r...](http://edge.org/documents/Edge-Serpentine-
MapsGallery/high-res/Krause.pdf)

The other maps in the collection are also interesting
<http://edge.org/documents/Edge-Serpentine-MapsGallery/>

------
shib71
This inspired me to find a scale comparison of Africa vs my home (Australia)
which led me to MapFight:

<http://mapfight.appspot.com/africa-vs-au>

<http://mapfight.appspot.com/africa-vs-europe>

<http://mapfight.appspot.com/africa-vs-usc>

~~~
codfrantic
Thanks for that link :-D Was wondering a size comparison earlier while reading
a HN post about Tesla superchargers (Texas vs Netherlands(my home)
<http://mapfight.appspot.com/texas-vs-nl>)

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mosqutip
Hey guys... did you know that continents are often bigger than countries? Mind
blowing.

~~~
interskh
Did you know that Africa is bigger than North America?

~~~
Turing_Machine
You certainly wouldn't have learned that from that infographic. :-)

Even if comparing countries to continents were valid, that map completely
omits the two largest countries in the world, and only includes three of the
top nine (#10 is an African country).

~~~
mosqutip
Also unsettling is how they say "all of Europe" is included. There is
absolutely no way that chunk labeled "Eastern Europe" contains Ukraine,
Belarus, Romania, Bulgaria, etc. It's large enough to maybe represent _just_
the Ukraine.

~~~
qw
They forgot the Nordic countries too.

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melvinram
Relevant West Wing video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8zBC2dvERM>

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rangibaby
This article is missing some important context on _why_ the true size of
Africa matters: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection>

~~~
manojlds
OMG, I always wondered how come Greenland, such a huge piece of land, had
nothing much going on with it. I always thought it to be very very big,
because it is very very big. Now I realize that it is one-third the size of
Australia. Makes me want to find a globe soon and compare.

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jlmendezbonini
A more informative source for that image:
[http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/cartograph...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/cartography)

------
baddox
Do children in other countries/continents answer more accurately on these
questions? I'd also like to know the actual responses, since I highly doubt
that the majority of American schoolchildren responded with exactly "largest
in the world," unless it was a multiple choice exam, in which case I'd like to
see all the available responses.

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breckenedge
How much wealth can be extracted from the Sahara, which is as large as the US
or China? I guess solar power is an option.

~~~
daniel-cussen
Ironically, solar power, which is based on solid-state, performs worse in the
heat.

~~~
pavel_lishin
What about a system of mirrors pointing at a large boiler?

~~~
DuskStar
That still requires a heat differential to produce electricity, and thus works
worse in the heat. (of course, having more intense sunlight will help make up
for the loss in conversion efficiency)

~~~
altcognito
Not sure that this is accurate, isn't the "work" in a boiler done by the phase
transition to steam and the associated increase in pressure? Unless you're
referring to a particular design of solar energy production.

~~~
ndonnellan
There is no associated increase in pressure in the boiler typically. In fact,
there's usually a pressure drop. The high pressure is created in the feedwater
pumps for a steam system. The boiler converts liquid at high pressure to steam
at high pressure. The steam volume then expands to perform work in a turbine.
A salt-plant would probably use steam near 100bar and expand it through the
turbine to below 1 bar (sub-ambient) such that the saturation temperature is
as close to ambient temperature as possible.

There is a significant amount of work done at the last stages of the turbine
(when going from +1bar -> 0.1 bar) so increasing the ambient temperature can
have a noticeable on total cycle efficiency.

------
advisedwang
According to Wikipedia: Madagascar - 587000km2 , British Isles - 315000km2 .

Whoever made this map under-represented the African island, even though the
whole point is to highlight under-representation of Africa.

------
wtvanhest
Off topic. But does anyone know why it seems like countries and even states
(like Florida, I'm from there) seem to have worse economies as they get closer
to the equator?

~~~
ars
I've noticed this too.

My theory is that the harder life is the more successful it is. Which is the
opposite of what you would expect.

In hot places shelter is not really needed, you don't need to store food for
the winter, and you don't need as much food (although you do need water).

In cold places you have to plan for the winter, and that effort translates
into improving your life in all things, not just shelter and food.

You might like this book: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep>

Also see: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse>

------
jackmaney
Why is this on the front page of HN?

~~~
kristopolous
I believe it's primarily because story submissions don't have down arrows? At
least not at my karma level.

~~~
jackmaney
Really? It's impossible to downvote submissions? That's ridiculous.

~~~
kristopolous
Here's what I see @ karma 579: <http://i.imgur.com/eKkzXgL.png> ... perhaps I
get down arrows for submissions at a certain threshold? I don't know.

Edit: The answer is "there are none". from
<http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html>:

"Why don't I see down arrows?

There are no down arrows on submissions. They only appear on comments after
users reach a certain karma threshold."

So I guess a collusion of puppet accounts in some script that automates
upvoting can be used to game the system pretty easily without the story
falling from grace for a while - _as there exists no mechanism for the
community to do so_.

~~~
waterlesscloud
While there's no downvoting for submissions, they can be flagged by users with
a certain karma level. Flagging acts like a heavily weighted downvote for
moving a story down the list, and at a certain number of flag the story is
made [dead] and no longer appears at all to most users.

Of course, flag too many of the wrong stories, like I apparently did, and you
lose the ability to flag.

So we get what we get.

~~~
kristopolous
oh I indeed have the flag link. I thought that was only to be used in dire
circumstances - like people posting a large stash of say, credit card
information or child pornography - not for a story which I thought had bad
science (such as this)

~~~
ars
You are correct. If you abuse flag for stories you disagree with your flag
privileges will be taken away.

~~~
waterlesscloud
I flagged most non-tech political stories because I think they rarely lead to
interesting conversations.

Apparently that was "abuse" of flagging. It would have been nice to have had
some guidelines. Ah well, we still get plenty of political stories, and they
still turn into 99% tribal warfare.

