Here's how I computed the average height of a country. I represented each country as a grid of 2500 points. Then, for each point, I calculated how far you could travel in a straight east-west line without leaving the country. The average width is the average of these distances.
This is an interesting way to deal with the problem of anomalous parts of a country affecting its height/width ratio (consider Namibia for example). When I read the description I assumed that you hadn't thought the methodology through - if you are using the arithmetic mean of the widths over all latitudes then average width = area/total height, and average height = area/total width, so average height/average width = total height/total width. Using what is approximately a root mean square is a good way to sort this out (though I would just have used a root mean square). However I am a little sceptical as to whether methodology is working. The ratio for Chile seems like it should be more like 8. What happened? I am also wondering how it treats countries that are large collections of islands. The ratio for Indonesia (I suspect) would be quite close to 1 using your methodology but it feels like it should be less.
Southern Chile has a very ragged coastline with lots of islands. You probably couldn't go very far horizontally or vertically from many parts in that area of the country.
Update: September 14. A previous version of this quiz had incorrect numbers due to an Excel spreadsheet error. For example, the number for Chile was only 2.33. This has been fixed now.
Interesting methodology. Floored to see that Myanmar made the list, but not Vietnam. Using the looking at a map and guessing version I would have expected the opposite!
Norway goes all the way over to russia.. it is basically as wide as norway sweden finland together. Though yes it has a slim waist.. (and a big bottom). Longest north south line would be a bit east of oslo-trondheim
Yes, ditto the Lebanon. The north-south focus makes the answers a bit different to what they would be if it were a quiz of "think of a thin country" - which I've just found out does exist.
I imagine the sticking point is that the calculations use a strict latitude/longitude basis rather than finding the axis on which a country is tall (which would lead to subjective interpretations of tall vs. long)?
Did much better on this one than the other. Only missed togo, benin, qatar and taiwan. On the other quiz I was floundering and actually below average (2 below I think, only got 1 point)
"Here's how I computed the average * height * of a country. ...I calculated how far you could travel in a straight * east-west * line without leaving the country. The average * width * is the average of these distances.
I feel like quiz is correct. The comparison of Norway and Chile is completely irrelevant because when determining the ratios for this quiz you have to compare the length of the X axis to the length of the Y axis and since Chile is almost completely vertical and not very wide it will have a larger ratio, but Norway while thin has a very noticable angle so the angle will be smaller, because of this Norway does not make the cut. the same applies for Myanmar, Vietnam and Mozambique.
The name of the quiz is "Top 20 Countries Taller than Wide"not 'Top 20 Thinest Countries'. If it was then definitely Norway would be on this list but also counties like The Gambia, Eritrea and Laos would be on this list.
The main one I can think of is Vietnam. Please correct me if I am wrong, I do not know if it is wrong going off the method you provided, but I would think Vietnam would be taller than wider.
Didn't like this quiz at all, sorry QM. Weird methodology that led to some weird answers and left off countries that are CLEARLY way longer than wider. Meh.
Why not Japan?
But this is just nerd stuff so who cares.