Does "land area" assume a country is perfectly flat?
Stand-up Maths3 HN recommenders · 2020–2023
859K views · explainer · evergreen · Uploaded 2020-08-19
Matt Parker of Stand-up Maths asks whether a country's reported land area accounts for hills and mountains, working through how surface area depends on the resolution of elevation data. It follows up on a question from a viewer and work by researchers who measured it.
HN recommends it in map projection and coastline threads as a fun look at how measurement choices change area figures.
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4 comments from Hacker News
>But then realized that the coastline paradox must also exist for 3D surfaces (TINs or DEMs or whatnot) so asking “what is the area of a surface on earth” can be a very complex question if dealing with elevation. StandUpMaths did a great video on this recently, asking whether national land area includes elevation and which nations would gain/lose the most land area if it were/weren't: [VIDEO]
Matt Parker from Standup Maths made a great video on exactly this subject a few weeks ago. "Does land area assume a country is perfectly flat?" [VIDEO]
> over every hill, dale, nook and cranny in England That would take topography into account which another rabbit hole like calculating the perimeter of Great Britain. Cf. Stand-up Maths, Does "land area" assume a country is perfectly flat? [VIDEO]
Then it becomes a coastline problem, with different answers depending on the resolution of your elevation data. Great video on this from Matt Parker (focusing on area in this case): [VIDEO]