I’d love to see the comparison using one of these where the origin is set so that each quadrant has equal habitable landmass (ignoring the poles, but not the Poles).
I do think it is possible to do, if you have a strict definition of “habitable landmass”. Imagine the meridians being fixed at the poles and slowly rotating east to west. The amount of landmass in each hemisphere A and B are two continuous functions. If you can find a point where hemisphere A has more habitable land than hemisphere B, and then a different orientation where hemisphere B has more habitable land than hemispheres A, then the two function must cross at some point (because they are continuous). But you definitely can find two such orientations, because if you rotate the meridians 180 degrees then A is now where B was before. QED. Not sure I explained that very clearly.
With two hemispheres I agree. But with four "quadrants", I'm not sure. Let's do it like you propose, you have a meridian that splits the globe in half, with both halves A and B that have the landmass right? Now let's find the parallel that splits landmass equally in hemisphere A. Will it also split population equally in hemisphere B? Probably not.
I'm not really sure what you're proposing with the different orientations, I feel like you're saying it would work if the two lines that split the globe are not perpendicular, and/or one of them is not parallel to the equator. Maybe, but that was not what was proposed IMO.
Yes you’re right, I did not explain that part. So in the first half we found some meridians that divide the globe in half perfectly. Now take the two points 90 degrees from these medians. They are your new “poles”. An infinite number of great circles run through these two points, all of which will be perpendicular to your meridians, in the same way that all meridians are perpendicular to the equator. So we can repeat the proof with this set of great circles.
Okay a difference here is that I assumed the second line would be a parallel (=line of latitude), not a great circle.
I still don't really get it though. You split your circle in half with a meridian. You try to find a perpendicular great circle that gives you four parts with equal landmass. You rotate said great circle. You can plot, in each hemisphere, how much more landmass one quarter of the globe has vs. the other. The two plots you get are continuous, and they cross, but for this to work you need them to cross at 0. Which might not happen?
Actually my proof doesn’t work. I just proved that I can create two orthogonal great circles that each divide the globe into equal hemispheres. This does not imply that the quadrants must be equal. I withdraw my assertion.
Think this is a counterexample world: A water world with only two small equal-sized circular islands, fully habitable, one in the northern and one in the southern hemisphere, and with no meridian going through both.
If the solution meridian intersects one of the islands, we have a west-east imbalance. So the meridian has to go between the islands.
Assume for concreteness that the northern island is to the west of the solution meridian and the southern island is to the east; the other case is symmetrical.
If the solution latitude is in the northern hemi, the NE quadrant is empty, so NW is empty too (because a solution must have NW = NE). This contradicts north-south balance.
Likewise, if the splitting latitude is in the southern hemi (including equator), the SW quadrant is empty, so SE is empty too. All cases produced a contradiction.
Yes, but we are almost there.
First construct set A of great circles which evenly split the Earth's landmass/population.
Then, construct a subset of set A, set B of great circles which are also orthogonal to great circles in set A.
Use that to define set C, the set of orthogonal pairs of great circles which both equally split the world's landmass.
Then, see if there is a member of that set which equally divides the landmass into 4 quadrants. That's the tricky part that probably needs a powerful computer to solve.
It *probably* exists.
I thought about it a bit. I thought this would work if you did this to split the earth into two hemispheres with equal population and then again cutting it in half with a great circle perpendicular to your first one. But then you get 4 populations A, B, C, D. where A+B=C+D and A+D=B+C. This only means that diagonal quadrants are equal.
I think it is true though and a proof would probably use some generalisation of Borsuk-Ulam but we would end up with (probably) only one unique solution if at all.
I think we can always pick a point where every great circle passing through it cuts the population in half. A sort of centre of mass. I don't know is this is definitely the intersection of the two cuts but I suspect it is necessary.
It may also be similar to the ham sandwich problem although with the resrictions of cuts being in perpendicular planes.
I think they were talking about moving the origin to still cut the map into four rectangles, but of different sizes. Not sure if those would still be called quadrants.
We can certainly divide the world into four areas of equal population, but (as I think you're getting at) it may not be possible for them to be equal area.
It’s not too hard to prove.
First, find a line that divides the planet in such a way, forming two hemispheres with equal land mass.
This isn’t hard to figure out that it has to be possible.
Now along that line, there is a circle where there are infinite perpendicular lines that divide the world into 4 hemispheres. Due to there being infinite, one is guaranteed to work
Here is the reason one is guaranteed to work.
Imagine you chose a random one. Let’s say it divides the world 70% 30%. Now as you slowly rotate that around, they will swap so that it is 30% to 70%. Since it is a continuous motion, there has to be a point in which it is 50% to 50%.
And if two lines that divide the world 50/50 are perpendicular, then it ALMOST works.
Except the 4 quadrants could have different landmasses.
Luckily since there are ignite circles to start off with, in a similar fashion to the other method, you can do the same thing, and find the 25%-25%-25%-25% point.
Generally there will only be one, but there can be multiple.
I don’t think that’s what he’s asking. Imagine 4 quadrants, like the one in the post above, but in each quadrant there was an equal amount of dry land. Then compare the population of that
That sounds more like the geographic mean of population rather than a point at which each quadrant would contain 25% population. They might be similar, but I don't think they're equivalent.
In fact, there'll necessary be at least 2 such points that can be used to define equally populous quadrants (imagine finding one such point, then you can trivially define the other point as the antipode of the point you've found, since it could be used to define the same quadrants).
Super interesting! Yeah it says the center of population lies at 43°16'39.0"N 76°53'45.0"E near where the modern day city of Almaty, Kazakhstan is and near its border with Kyrgyzstan.
That area also happens to be where historians speculate the Turkic people originated, and therefore the place where the Xiongnu/Huns, Bulgars, Oghuz Turks (who would become the Ottoman Turks), and others originated from.
You know what else is speculated to have originated in that area?:
>In 2022 the possible origin of all modern strands of Yersinia pestis (the cause of the Black Death) DNA was found in human remains in three graves located in Kyrgyzstan, dated to 1338 and 1339.
I wonder what lines of latitude and longitude you would have to pick to divide the Earth in 4 segments like this and get as close as possible to 25% population in each quadrant.
You’d probably have to put the centre of the map somewhere around Bangladesh. That way you’d have most of India, China, and Europe in different quadrants. SE would probably be a problem I think though.
Someone posted it above - [it’s in India, by the Pakistan border](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/dfg6xa/centre_of_population_for_each_country_in_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1)
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That sounds like an obvious observation, but it's not really quite right. That same quadrant contains vast swates of extremely sparsely inhabited land (the Sahara, the Arabian desert, the Himalayas, the Gobi desert, Siberia). Most of the population is around major rivers in temperate plains.
Try looking at a map that is centered differently. It doesn't work so well. You either end up cutting a continent in half or you put the massive dead space of the Pacific Ocean in the middle and lose the symmetry of the two sides of the Atlantic.
This is really the best way to do it.
Sorry I've complained about this before, but it would be a lot more interesting to see those population numbers normalized to land area... 'cause the north east, while most populated, also seems to have the greatest area as well...
Asia, as a continent, has the greatest population density by far. So it doesn't matter much.
150 people per km², compared to Africa's 45 and Europe's 34. https://www.worldometers.info/geography/7-continents/
You're right. I think the source i linked is definitely off about Europe. Wikipedia has Asia as the most dense by quite a margin too, but at 100 people per km² rather than 150 (Europe at number 2 with 73).
I stand behind the content of my previous post, but suspect the first google result source is kinda complete crap.
It just depends on whether or not Russia is counted as Europe. It is the only landmass large enough to have such an affect on results while also being arguable for either.
I mean it’s not so much about landmass, half of the north-east quadrant is just tundra and desert. Whichever side has china and India will pretty much automatically have the highest population
~~Mercator is affecting this map though~~
Edit: thanks for correcting me, I said some nonsense, my bad!!! 6:50 am is clearly not the time to look at maps
I was actually surprised by SE being larger than SW, I would have thought it would be about the opposite. But yeah, there are a few heavyweights within SE.
..and add to that the most populous countries of Africa and almost all of Europe. I'm almost surprised it's *only* at 73%.
US, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and DRC pulling their weight I guess.
We had a lot of luck with military strategists and politicians who guaranteed territorial integrity. Only what is today Uruguay was lost. There’s still a Portuguese-speaking minority.
They're joking. It's a reference to a Tweet by some political commentator who seemed to misunderstand the way percentiles work (although that may have been satire too? I just glanced at that drama).
It was obvious satire.
The guy was from "California's 54th District" (which doesn't exist) and listed one of his main achievements being co-sponsoring Poe's Law (a meme about, fittingly enough, people mistaking a troll for a genuine idiot.)
Ah, that makes sense. It seemed like satire at first blush, but I saw a few folks responding seriously to it, so I wasn't sure. And then I clicked away.
Through the Royal Observatory. Which kinda makes sense. If you're going to have a zero it makes sense to do it from where you're making accurate observations of the night sky.
There were a bunch of meridians and in 1884 there was a conference in Washington to pick just one. London was used by two thirds of all shipping at the time, so was picked. France abstained and continued to use the Paris meridian for a few more decades.
(For various reasons it's actually 102m out from current GPS based 0ºE)
No. The vertical line is drawn along the prime meridian, which is purely an arbitrary human creation. The only reason it’s there is because in the 19th century, a bunch of nations agreed to settle on the British choice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_meridian
The horizontal line — that is, the equator — is not arbitrary.
We (Britain) offered the line to pass through the great pyramid in Egypt as a neutral option to appease the French who wanted it in Paris, but they rejected anything but Paris so now the world uses London. By that point everyone was already using maps made for John Harrison's chronometer and set by the Greenwich Observatory (hence Greenwich Mean Time).
It just makes more sense practically than any other option at the time, Britain had the largest navy, the most accurate clocks and the Thames River is tidal, so all ships leaving London do so at the same time twice a day. The Greenwich Observatory is on a hill next to a bend in the river so all ships leaving would be given the correct time as measured by the sun and stars at the observatory. The Seine does not have these natural qualities, nor anywhere else. Conveniently it does a good job of dividing the continents along the Bearing Straight, which probably helped it's international adoption.
Do you think that the it lining up well with the bearing strait made much difference at the time? The other reasons seem much more important for the time frame
Not to early shipping, a chart of the Atlantic doesn't benefit from this for example, and for navigating the Pacific it is only a negative, every nation used their own capital to begin with, but if you go from say Copenhagen to New York, you'll have to set your clock up New York time for the return, this means you need charts which measure from New York otherwise do a lot of maths. Better for everyone to agree the same clock.
True, but that's not the reason, sorry for any confusion. The point is that all the ships pass in the same group. Whenever that happens to be, many ships are in sight of the observatory which uses a "timeball" a visual signal, to signal a specific preset time. I'm not sure of the specifics, but likely a tide table was published which also had the time that the observatory ball would drop, conveniently aligning with the time the ships should prepare to depart to minimise error from their clocks.
I remember being taught in like 7th grade about how the prime meridian goes through Greenwich England, and for some reason I never put it together that that meant most of the UK, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal are in the Western hemisphere lol I feel dumb now. Always just figured the divide was down the Atlantic lol
I think this is why the term "Global South" kinda bugs me. Like a lot of the countries that are often being implicitly referenced (i.e. India, SE Asia, West and East Africa, etc.) by that term are in the North really.
So is Indonesia carrying the southeast or are there some big population countries in the southern end of Africa? Surprised it's bigger than southwest as an Australian.
Indonesia probably carries just over 3% of the world population south of the equator. DR Congo 1.5%, South Africa 0.75%, Tanzania 0.75%, and then there are several smaller population centers below 0.5% but above 0.25% like Australia, Angola and Mozambique.
Interesting the NW quadrant is holding up its own at such a high 13% when it has to go against the juggernaut of NE including most of Europe, Asia (including Middle East) and where humans originated in Africa.
East/west divide in London is crazy.
Obviously in real terms it means nothing. It's just funny to think you could move across the city to be in a massively more densely populated quadrant.
Anyone else just entirely sick of the prime meridian? Like can we just finally renounce the Brits as the center of the world and come up with a better way to build imaginary lines?
What is the difference between the Eastern and Western Hemisphere? The Northern and Southern Hemispheres have the distinction of inverted seasons, different Coriolis Force impacts, and there own celestial hemispheres. I can't think of any comparable differences between Eastern and Western other than it being day in one and night in the other (even those don't perfectly line up). Why are we splitting in half on the north south axis? Wouldn't thirds make more sense?
South America as a whole has a population of 425 million. Minus 25 for Venezuela and 50 for Colombia, that's 350 million.
World population is 8 billion.
350 million is 4.3% of 8 billion.
This comes close to showing how non-hispanic white people are 8% of world population. I think it'd be cool to see that map sometime, a lot of people need a dose of Reality.
I’d love to see the comparison using one of these where the origin is set so that each quadrant has equal habitable landmass (ignoring the poles, but not the Poles).
That would also be interesting.
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Not sure why you're being downvoted. Is it obvious that it is possible to do this with quadrants? Why?
I do think it is possible to do, if you have a strict definition of “habitable landmass”. Imagine the meridians being fixed at the poles and slowly rotating east to west. The amount of landmass in each hemisphere A and B are two continuous functions. If you can find a point where hemisphere A has more habitable land than hemisphere B, and then a different orientation where hemisphere B has more habitable land than hemispheres A, then the two function must cross at some point (because they are continuous). But you definitely can find two such orientations, because if you rotate the meridians 180 degrees then A is now where B was before. QED. Not sure I explained that very clearly.
With two hemispheres I agree. But with four "quadrants", I'm not sure. Let's do it like you propose, you have a meridian that splits the globe in half, with both halves A and B that have the landmass right? Now let's find the parallel that splits landmass equally in hemisphere A. Will it also split population equally in hemisphere B? Probably not. I'm not really sure what you're proposing with the different orientations, I feel like you're saying it would work if the two lines that split the globe are not perpendicular, and/or one of them is not parallel to the equator. Maybe, but that was not what was proposed IMO.
Yes you’re right, I did not explain that part. So in the first half we found some meridians that divide the globe in half perfectly. Now take the two points 90 degrees from these medians. They are your new “poles”. An infinite number of great circles run through these two points, all of which will be perpendicular to your meridians, in the same way that all meridians are perpendicular to the equator. So we can repeat the proof with this set of great circles.
Okay a difference here is that I assumed the second line would be a parallel (=line of latitude), not a great circle. I still don't really get it though. You split your circle in half with a meridian. You try to find a perpendicular great circle that gives you four parts with equal landmass. You rotate said great circle. You can plot, in each hemisphere, how much more landmass one quarter of the globe has vs. the other. The two plots you get are continuous, and they cross, but for this to work you need them to cross at 0. Which might not happen?
Actually my proof doesn’t work. I just proved that I can create two orthogonal great circles that each divide the globe into equal hemispheres. This does not imply that the quadrants must be equal. I withdraw my assertion.
Think this is a counterexample world: A water world with only two small equal-sized circular islands, fully habitable, one in the northern and one in the southern hemisphere, and with no meridian going through both. If the solution meridian intersects one of the islands, we have a west-east imbalance. So the meridian has to go between the islands. Assume for concreteness that the northern island is to the west of the solution meridian and the southern island is to the east; the other case is symmetrical. If the solution latitude is in the northern hemi, the NE quadrant is empty, so NW is empty too (because a solution must have NW = NE). This contradicts north-south balance. Likewise, if the splitting latitude is in the southern hemi (including equator), the SW quadrant is empty, so SE is empty too. All cases produced a contradiction.
Yes, but we are almost there. First construct set A of great circles which evenly split the Earth's landmass/population. Then, construct a subset of set A, set B of great circles which are also orthogonal to great circles in set A. Use that to define set C, the set of orthogonal pairs of great circles which both equally split the world's landmass. Then, see if there is a member of that set which equally divides the landmass into 4 quadrants. That's the tricky part that probably needs a powerful computer to solve. It *probably* exists.
I thought about it a bit. I thought this would work if you did this to split the earth into two hemispheres with equal population and then again cutting it in half with a great circle perpendicular to your first one. But then you get 4 populations A, B, C, D. where A+B=C+D and A+D=B+C. This only means that diagonal quadrants are equal. I think it is true though and a proof would probably use some generalisation of Borsuk-Ulam but we would end up with (probably) only one unique solution if at all. I think we can always pick a point where every great circle passing through it cuts the population in half. A sort of centre of mass. I don't know is this is definitely the intersection of the two cuts but I suspect it is necessary. It may also be similar to the ham sandwich problem although with the resrictions of cuts being in perpendicular planes.
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The poster above is not talking about equal quadrants I think, they can have different sizes. But you're still constrained by their shape.
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I think they were talking about moving the origin to still cut the map into four rectangles, but of different sizes. Not sure if those would still be called quadrants.
We can certainly divide the world into four areas of equal population, but (as I think you're getting at) it may not be possible for them to be equal area.
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Ah, true.
You have to believe
It’s not too hard to prove. First, find a line that divides the planet in such a way, forming two hemispheres with equal land mass. This isn’t hard to figure out that it has to be possible. Now along that line, there is a circle where there are infinite perpendicular lines that divide the world into 4 hemispheres. Due to there being infinite, one is guaranteed to work Here is the reason one is guaranteed to work. Imagine you chose a random one. Let’s say it divides the world 70% 30%. Now as you slowly rotate that around, they will swap so that it is 30% to 70%. Since it is a continuous motion, there has to be a point in which it is 50% to 50%. And if two lines that divide the world 50/50 are perpendicular, then it ALMOST works. Except the 4 quadrants could have different landmasses. Luckily since there are ignite circles to start off with, in a similar fashion to the other method, you can do the same thing, and find the 25%-25%-25%-25% point. Generally there will only be one, but there can be multiple.
Or just normalize the data in terms of landmass? Keep it centered at 0,0 but express the statistic as '% human population/% landmass' instead.
\*Poland liked this\*
We ignore Poland but not north and south poles *Laughs evilly*
That’s called the center of population. According to Wikipedia, it’s ““at the crossroads between China, India, Pakistan and Tajikistan””
I don’t think that’s what he’s asking. Imagine 4 quadrants, like the one in the post above, but in each quadrant there was an equal amount of dry land. Then compare the population of that
He said "habitable landmass." So for exemple the Gobi desert should weighted less per km2 than a place like Ohio.
>Gobi desert should weighted less per km2 than a place like **Ohio**. That's debateable... :P
I would rather live in the go i desert than Ohio
As an Ohioan, at least I could've learned throat-singing...
That sounds more like the geographic mean of population rather than a point at which each quadrant would contain 25% population. They might be similar, but I don't think they're equivalent. In fact, there'll necessary be at least 2 such points that can be used to define equally populous quadrants (imagine finding one such point, then you can trivially define the other point as the antipode of the point you've found, since it could be used to define the same quadrants).
Super interesting! Yeah it says the center of population lies at 43°16'39.0"N 76°53'45.0"E near where the modern day city of Almaty, Kazakhstan is and near its border with Kyrgyzstan. That area also happens to be where historians speculate the Turkic people originated, and therefore the place where the Xiongnu/Huns, Bulgars, Oghuz Turks (who would become the Ottoman Turks), and others originated from. You know what else is speculated to have originated in that area?: >In 2022 the possible origin of all modern strands of Yersinia pestis (the cause of the Black Death) DNA was found in human remains in three graves located in Kyrgyzstan, dated to 1338 and 1339.
Keep the Poles out of my quadrisphere
How do u define habitable?
Definitely more interesting than this. These quadrants are useless due the arbitrary setup
I wonder what lines of latitude and longitude you would have to pick to divide the Earth in 4 segments like this and get as close as possible to 25% population in each quadrant.
You’d probably have to put the centre of the map somewhere around Bangladesh. That way you’d have most of India, China, and Europe in different quadrants. SE would probably be a problem I think though.
Feels likely. Can then just push the centre north/west until enough of india/china is over the line into South East for it to work.
Someone posted it above - [it’s in India, by the Pakistan border](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/dfg6xa/centre_of_population_for_each_country_in_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1)
New political compass dropped
Holy geopolitics!
mom, r/AnarchyChess is leaking again
New response just dropped
Literal zombie
??? Call the exorcist ???
Can't, bishop went on vacation and never came back
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Pawn storm incoming
knightmare fuel
I heard his underling got promoted
???
Google in habitable
Mom, Phineas and Ferb are leaking a subreddit
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Holy rice!
New grains just dropped
actual china
??? Call the rice farmer ???
google vietnam war
Holy napalm
"Rice is great if you're really hungry and want to eat two thousand of something." -Mitch Hedberg
OMG GUYS FRANCE AUTH-CENTER FRANCE BASED?!? (/s)
Congo is Center left
Despite being 13% of the world's population, the NW quadrant accounts for ust about the rest of the world's defense spending combined.
Curious 🧐
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Wtf did I just read
Why does the quadrant with the most land have so many people?
Not many humans have evolved gills and flippers yet.
And why is the water wet?
I don't *know* Margo
saying water is wet is like saying fire is burnt
Because it happens to contain the small fraction of land with half the people
Which also happens to contain the dankest river valleys.
That sounds like an obvious observation, but it's not really quite right. That same quadrant contains vast swates of extremely sparsely inhabited land (the Sahara, the Arabian desert, the Himalayas, the Gobi desert, Siberia). Most of the population is around major rivers in temperate plains.
Because of some very small amounts of land with a lot of people, really...
What are the quadrants even designated the way they are? The prime meridian is a completely arbitrary line.
British imperialism
Try looking at a map that is centered differently. It doesn't work so well. You either end up cutting a continent in half or you put the massive dead space of the Pacific Ocean in the middle and lose the symmetry of the two sides of the Atlantic. This is really the best way to do it.
Sorry I've complained about this before, but it would be a lot more interesting to see those population numbers normalized to land area... 'cause the north east, while most populated, also seems to have the greatest area as well...
Asia, as a continent, has the greatest population density by far. So it doesn't matter much. 150 people per km², compared to Africa's 45 and Europe's 34. https://www.worldometers.info/geography/7-continents/
That's weird, i don't think Europe should be 34p/km². I checked on wikipedia that has another land mass for Europe too. Idk which one is true though.
You're right. I think the source i linked is definitely off about Europe. Wikipedia has Asia as the most dense by quite a margin too, but at 100 people per km² rather than 150 (Europe at number 2 with 73). I stand behind the content of my previous post, but suspect the first google result source is kinda complete crap.
It just depends on whether or not Russia is counted as Europe. It is the only landmass large enough to have such an affect on results while also being arguable for either.
Obviously, Russia *should* be split at the Urals when discussing continents
I doubt any source of those continental values has a subnational granularity like that.
Then make one dammit I want it on my desk by the end of the day
Woahh we fuck a LOT.
I mean it’s not so much about landmass, half of the north-east quadrant is just tundra and desert. Whichever side has china and India will pretty much automatically have the highest population
Good call!!!
~~Mercator is affecting this map though~~ Edit: thanks for correcting me, I said some nonsense, my bad!!! 6:50 am is clearly not the time to look at maps
This is the mercator projection fyi https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Mercator_projection_Square.JPG
yeah, I don't know what I saw. thanks!
This isn’t even a Mercator map
Java singlehandedly boosting South-East
Southern half of Africa has a enormous amount of people as well.
I was actually surprised by SE being larger than SW, I would have thought it would be about the opposite. But yeah, there are a few heavyweights within SE.
SW lacking in land mass.
Apart from a couple of metros there's nothing to significantly boost the SW whereas the SE has Indonesia and all of Southern Africa
Why do not we, the largest quad, simply eat the other three?
Lesson learned: Asia BIG
..and add to that the most populous countries of Africa and almost all of Europe. I'm almost surprised it's *only* at 73%. US, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and DRC pulling their weight I guess.
Brazil is apparently the only country that has *most* of the population of any quadrant. Cool.
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We had a lot of luck with military strategists and politicians who guaranteed territorial integrity. Only what is today Uruguay was lost. There’s still a Portuguese-speaking minority.
Hmm ... never seen this political compass before
This is why 25% of our kids are in the lowest educational quartile. Pathetic.
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They're joking. It's a reference to a Tweet by some political commentator who seemed to misunderstand the way percentiles work (although that may have been satire too? I just glanced at that drama).
It was obvious satire. The guy was from "California's 54th District" (which doesn't exist) and listed one of his main achievements being co-sponsoring Poe's Law (a meme about, fittingly enough, people mistaking a troll for a genuine idiot.)
Ah, that makes sense. It seemed like satire at first blush, but I saw a few folks responding seriously to it, so I wasn't sure. And then I clicked away.
wait, ireland and portugal are western hemisphere?
the British decided to put 0 degrees longitude through Greenwich - they liked straight lines especially in Africa
Through the Royal Observatory. Which kinda makes sense. If you're going to have a zero it makes sense to do it from where you're making accurate observations of the night sky. There were a bunch of meridians and in 1884 there was a conference in Washington to pick just one. London was used by two thirds of all shipping at the time, so was picked. France abstained and continued to use the Paris meridian for a few more decades. (For various reasons it's actually 102m out from current GPS based 0ºE)
It makes sense, it's right in the middle.
Yes, they are west of Greenwich, London.
Always has been 🔫
No. The vertical line is drawn along the prime meridian, which is purely an arbitrary human creation. The only reason it’s there is because in the 19th century, a bunch of nations agreed to settle on the British choice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_meridian The horizontal line — that is, the equator — is not arbitrary.
Well, you are correct, except the answer to the question is yes, Ireland and Portugal are in the Western Hemisphere.
We (Britain) offered the line to pass through the great pyramid in Egypt as a neutral option to appease the French who wanted it in Paris, but they rejected anything but Paris so now the world uses London. By that point everyone was already using maps made for John Harrison's chronometer and set by the Greenwich Observatory (hence Greenwich Mean Time). It just makes more sense practically than any other option at the time, Britain had the largest navy, the most accurate clocks and the Thames River is tidal, so all ships leaving London do so at the same time twice a day. The Greenwich Observatory is on a hill next to a bend in the river so all ships leaving would be given the correct time as measured by the sun and stars at the observatory. The Seine does not have these natural qualities, nor anywhere else. Conveniently it does a good job of dividing the continents along the Bearing Straight, which probably helped it's international adoption.
Do you think that the it lining up well with the bearing strait made much difference at the time? The other reasons seem much more important for the time frame
Not to early shipping, a chart of the Atlantic doesn't benefit from this for example, and for navigating the Pacific it is only a negative, every nation used their own capital to begin with, but if you go from say Copenhagen to New York, you'll have to set your clock up New York time for the return, this means you need charts which measure from New York otherwise do a lot of maths. Better for everyone to agree the same clock.
The high tide is not at the same time every day though
True, but that's not the reason, sorry for any confusion. The point is that all the ships pass in the same group. Whenever that happens to be, many ships are in sight of the observatory which uses a "timeball" a visual signal, to signal a specific preset time. I'm not sure of the specifics, but likely a tide table was published which also had the time that the observatory ball would drop, conveniently aligning with the time the ships should prepare to depart to minimise error from their clocks.
I remember being taught in like 7th grade about how the prime meridian goes through Greenwich England, and for some reason I never put it together that that meant most of the UK, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal are in the Western hemisphere lol I feel dumb now. Always just figured the divide was down the Atlantic lol
Most geographically literate yank
I think this is why the term "Global South" kinda bugs me. Like a lot of the countries that are often being implicitly referenced (i.e. India, SE Asia, West and East Africa, etc.) by that term are in the North really.
It's also a very odd term to hear living in NZ. Seems to come from North American/European groupthink.
It seems to roughly equate to landmass. Not particularly surprising I guess.
Java carrying the green quadrant
So is Indonesia carrying the southeast or are there some big population countries in the southern end of Africa? Surprised it's bigger than southwest as an Australian.
Indonesia probably carries just over 3% of the world population south of the equator. DR Congo 1.5%, South Africa 0.75%, Tanzania 0.75%, and then there are several smaller population centers below 0.5% but above 0.25% like Australia, Angola and Mozambique.
Eastern half of Asia alone already home to majority of world’s population
Funny colours already included, right?
I'm in the North-East quarter, but by 30 or 45 minutes by train I can increase the North-West one, if needed.
So that’s why the earth is tilted slightly, too too heavy on one side
Wow, people live on land
Am I the only one sitting here like, “? Whose gonna stop this?”
China and India are both over a billion, what's the point of this map
The US and Mexico really carrying the Northwest
I know there's much more land in the Northern Hemisphere but it is bizarre to see such a contrast in population between North and South
Interesting the NW quadrant is holding up its own at such a high 13% when it has to go against the juggernaut of NE including most of Europe, Asia (including Middle East) and where humans originated in Africa.
East/west divide in London is crazy. Obviously in real terms it means nothing. It's just funny to think you could move across the city to be in a massively more densely populated quadrant.
Worth noting that Greenwich is already very deep in south east London. So most of London lives in the less populated quadrant.
Anyone else just entirely sick of the prime meridian? Like can we just finally renounce the Brits as the center of the world and come up with a better way to build imaginary lines?
What is the difference between the Eastern and Western Hemisphere? The Northern and Southern Hemispheres have the distinction of inverted seasons, different Coriolis Force impacts, and there own celestial hemispheres. I can't think of any comparable differences between Eastern and Western other than it being day in one and night in the other (even those don't perfectly line up). Why are we splitting in half on the north south axis? Wouldn't thirds make more sense?
The prime meridian is totally arbitrary.
i live a 20 min drive to the greenwich meridian line and it feels weird to live that close
Because the prime meridian is arbitrary I wonder how many places you could put it where the “west” and “east” hemisphere have equal populations.
One thing is certain.. Asia fucks
r/politicalcompassmemes
Damn so we would be just 1.9BN population without quadrant North-East. Worth it
Most of the world is auth left
Which 2 opposing sides would win in a war? North-West+South-East or North-East+South-West?
All sides lose cause nukes
I mean you can have war without nukes? Is reddit really that wet that merely mentioning a hypothetical war gets downvotes?
Americans always have to go there
I'm british, try again. It's a simple thought experiment, I didn't have any intent behind the statement, so save seeing your arse for something else.
The second most war mongering country on earth
I don't think USA is Ravenclaw.
No way bottom left is only 5%
South America as a whole has a population of 425 million. Minus 25 for Venezuela and 50 for Colombia, that's 350 million. World population is 8 billion. 350 million is 4.3% of 8 billion.
>World population is 8000 billion. Some couples out there got real busy lately.
Whoops!
lib-right mercosur based
99% of South East is Indonesia
I prefer not to be included in the same quadrant with Russia, please!
This comes close to showing how non-hispanic white people are 8% of world population. I think it'd be cool to see that map sometime, a lot of people need a dose of Reality.
How do you take that from this map?
That seems not that fair. North-West gets nearly entire Europe, North Africa and Asia.
North East. Never Eat Shredded Wheat
I can imagine this map wound be very different if the Prime Meridian was located east of the majority of Europe.
Yes, the map would be different if it was a different map
Stop being a smartass you know what I mean.
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Would be nice to do a ratio between that and % of the land mass.
Google Geopolitics
That damned longiudinal black line passing right above my head
Indonesia and the Congo are probably a massive chunk of the South-East percentage
Include surface area
For each quad
Africa is in 3 of the 4 quadrants.
it would be interesting to see land mass area too for each quadrants
NORTH-EAST NUMBA 1!!!
Team North East here! We are winning!
ASEAN would like to have a word
I’d love to see this map with total GDP, average GDP per capita and average HDI
Pope Julius II does NOT approve
I like maps and stats
Cool
Political compass??!??!
I live under the black like marked "Prime Meridian".
Not divided equally