| Author |
Greenland's coastline...
|
Bert Bates
author
Sheriff
Joined: Oct 14, 2002
Posts: 8712
|
|
I get a "daily escape" email with a picture of some cool place I might like to visit someday. I like this service.
That said, I had to laugh at the first sentence in the description of today's picture:
Greenland's coastline is longer than the circumference of the Earth...
So, doesn't that length depend mightily on the length of your measuring stick? Is there a standard measuring stick length for such things as "the length of a coastline"?
|
Eliminate fossil fuel subsidies. (If you're not on the edge, you're taking up too much room.)
|
 |
Paul Clapham
Bartender
Joined: Oct 14, 2005
Posts: 16479
|
|
Bert Bates wrote:So, doesn't that length depend mightily on the length of your measuring stick?
Well, yes, that's right.
Is there a standard measuring stick length for such things as "the length of a coastline"?
Believe it or not there's a "World Vector Shoreline" database which can be used to produce fun facts like this one. Check out the Wikipedia article which your article's writer may have referred to: List of countries by length of coastline.
|
|
Greg Charles
Bartender
Joined: Oct 01, 2001
Posts: 2535
|
|
That reminds me of this analogy on why software estimates are so unreliable: http://www.quora.com/Engineering-Management/Why-are-software-development-task-estimations-regularly-off-by-a-factor-of-2-3
The coastline looks much longer when you're standing on it.
|
|
 |
|
|
subject: Greenland's coastline...
|
|
|
0
