Talk:List of countries by length of coastline

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This article was nominated for deletion on 29 March 2006. The result of the discussion was Speedy keep.

Isn't there a problem in that the more accuraelt you measure the coastline of a country, the longer it is? Tompw 15:44, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, coastlines are fractal. This can be mitigated by taking data from a single source, which will presumably survey all coastlines at the same scale. EdC 02:54, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

No, this can not be mitigated. The whole exercise is meaningless. The order of the countries on the list will be different depending on the scale at which you measure. So to do this properly, you really need to have one list for the 100km scale, 10km, 1km, 100m, 10m, ... An even better approach is to just admit that the coastline has no definite length, and that this whole list therefore is nonsense. Lars Marius Garshol, 4 April 2006

Contents 1 Russia 2 Greenland 3 Guinea-Bissau 4 Countries deleted 5 Montenegro

[edit] Russia

How does Russia ever have a shorter caostline then Norway! You only need to look at the map to see that russsia has a much loger coastline.

[edit] Greenland

Greenland seems to be missing from the list. Since it constitutes rather a lot of coastline I was wondering if it might be a good idea to include it. Celcius 11:48, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Greenland is not the only one that was droped in the recent series of edits [1]. — Instantnood 14:38, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Guinea-Bissau

That must be a mistake? Guinea-Bissau is here listed as having the longest coastline in West Africa but it is in fact one of the smallest countries in west africa. Though I do notice it has quite a lot of islands so maybe when theyre all put together it adds up.. -- Astrokey44|talk 08:45, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

There seem to be other mistakes/different figures too: France is given as 5500km of coast here but is 7329 in this list; Jordan is given as 19 rather than 26.6 ; UAE a coast of 650km rather than 2,870; Kenya 536km rather than 1586km, Canada given as 243,792km rather than 265,523 -- Astrokey44|talk 09:30, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

You're going to find more and more discrepancies of this sort the more you look. Official figures for Norway's coastline vary from 13,000km to 550,000km. Basically you can produce any figure you want above a certain minimum limit (for Norway this would be about 2000km) by choosing the right scale at which to measure. The whole thing is just pointless. See Benoit Mandelbrot's discussion of the problem. Lars Marius Garshol, 4 April, 2006

Thanks Lars, but you are answering to a comment that was stated before the large scale rewrite of the article. Also, your point, was already taken into account when the poll for deletion took place (see template above). I suspect that the CIA World Factbook (which is the source of this article) has not used double standards (ie different scales) for its results. Fmore, the intro statement clearly says: "However, because length of coastline is a fractal measurement, measurements of a country's coastline at different scales will be different - the more detail, the longer the coastline will be. This is why there are different amounts given for a country's coastline." Do you agree? We will be glad to include you as a regular user in WP. Please sign up, there are many benefits and absolutely NO disadvantage. Message me (by clicking the [T] next to my name), to tell you how!  NikoSilver  ^{(T) @ (C)} 14:32, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Countries deleted

Why are some countries removed from the list in a recent series of edit [2]? — Instantnood 14:19, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Like? I see the total is almost the same (195 vs 194). I got the figures from List of countries by compactness, who's authors in turn took them from the CIA World Factbook. I'd be happy to add whichever you want, if you provide a source that uses the same map-scale for measuring coastline.  NikoSilver  ^{(T) @ (C)} 00:44, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

To name a few, French Guiana, Netherlands Antilles, Réunion, Bermuda, Hong Kong, Puerto Rico. — Instantnood 15:57, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Correct. That would mean that they are missing from 2 more articles (List of countries by compactness and List of countries by Coast/Area ratio). However, they do exist in the World Factbook (here). Also, there may be some "countries" here that should not be included (hence the almost equal totals). I'll try to check them in all three articles the week after due to Greek Orthodox Easter holidays. I hope it can wait...  NikoSilver  ^{(T) @ (C)} 16:51, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks very much. — Instantnood 18:43, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Montenegro

You should switch Serbia&Montenegro into Montenegro only,since Serbia is now landlocked country,all coast of former S&M belongs to Montenegro.