[HN Gopher] World Capitals Voronoi (2014)
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World Capitals Voronoi (2014)
Author : odyssey7
Score : 75 points
Date : 2023-06-01 16:52 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jasondavies.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jasondavies.com)
| realfruittastes wrote:
| Would be interesting to use the centroid of the current country
| as well.
| NKosmatos wrote:
| Jason has created some very nice maps, go check them out.
|
| Fun fact from this map, if I'm not mistaken, Greece is the only
| country touching three continents (Europe, Africa and Asia.
| antognini wrote:
| It's interesting to see how some of the boundaries drawn by this
| end up lining up with historical territories. For instance, in
| this map much of the American southwest comes under Mexico, which
| it largely was a part of during the middle of the 19th century.
| Scotland and Wales also fall under Ireland, which also makes
| sense given their common Celtic ancestry. And Vatican City has
| much more territory in Italy, which it did throughout much of the
| last millennium as the Papal States.
| mannykannot wrote:
| Good points. With regard to the last one, the result depends
| strongly on how one deals with the Vatican City being an
| enclave of Rome.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| I'd guess it just uses the central point of each city.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Except that the Vatican is fully within Rome so, actually,
| nowhere in Italy is closer to the Vatican than to Rome...
| smcin wrote:
| Or, nowhere else in the world is closer either.
|
| You made me curious to find out the antipode of the Vatican
| City (41.903degN,12.454degE): the nearest land point is
| Waitangi, Chatham Islands, New Zealand (43.9degS, 176W)
| according to:
| https://www.geodatos.net/en/antipodes/vatican/vatican-city
| (not 41.903W, -167?W, which is in the ocean).
| nevir wrote:
| So pleasing
| Triangle9349 wrote:
| very interesting, in some places the influence of cultures,
| language is close to the border
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Canada seems to me to come out the big winner.
|
| I keeps pretty much all its territory and it absorbs a
| significant chunk of the USA.
| koliber wrote:
| Percentage wise Andora is killing it!
| MrZander wrote:
| I wonder which country got the biggest relative bump in
| territory. Vatican City is probably a contender, and Timor-
| Leste nabbed a huge part of Australia.
| davidw wrote:
| Some of the small European countries like Monaco,
| Lichtenstein, San Marino, Andorra and the Vatican do quite
| well for themselves.
| runarberg wrote:
| I think Iceland and New Zealand are also contenders. Iceland
| absorbs all of Greenland, large portion of Nunavut, and a
| sizable chunk of Alaska. New Zealand grabs a large part of
| Antarctica.
|
| I think though if Nuuk were to be included the dynamics of
| Iceland would change significantly, and similar if you
| include New Zealand's already claimed territory on the
| Antarctic, then their gains are less impressive.
| sn41 wrote:
| I think it is because it is slightly to the west of Washington
| D. C., and there is no country to the north of Canada.
|
| If, say, Chicago is the capital of the US, I think a lot of
| Canada will end up being closer to Chicago than Ottawa.
| florieger wrote:
| How is Mongolia larger than Russia?
|
| According to Wikipedia: Mongolia is approximately 1,564,116 sq
| km, while Russia is approximately 17,098,242 sq km, making Russia
| 993% larger than Mongolia.
| [deleted]
| jylam wrote:
| This has nothing to do with real borders, but with the distance
| to the nearest capital (that's how Voronoi diagrams work)
|
| For instance, that shows that more than half of Russia
| territory is closest to the capital of Mongolia (which is
| Ulaanbaatar) than to Moscow, that's the point.
| zamadatix wrote:
| This map doesn't preserve area, it only says which capital is
| closest by distance.
| blue1 wrote:
| "Holy Sea"
| zamadatix wrote:
| Good eye.
| badcppdev wrote:
| The funny thing about the Vatican, in addition to the
| misspelling, is that it highlights the flaws of Voronoi when
| points are close together.
| hirundo wrote:
| So these are basically 3D Voronoi diagrams?
|
| https://www.thingiverse.com/search?q=voronoi
| mitko wrote:
| Another example of how real world data is always messier than a
| neat model:
|
| Vatican is entirely encircled in Rome, therefore any area outside
| Vatican is closer to Rome than the Vatican, yet if we look at
| them as point sources, as this map does, you see a lot of other
| area closer to Vatican.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Actually you know what, it is kinda weird that New Zealand _doesn
| 't_ have a claim to half of Antarctica.
| ianburrell wrote:
| New Zealand does have a claim containing McMurdo Station. It
| doesn't have much land since Ross Sea gets close to South Pole.
|
| The unclaimed Marie Byrd Land is next to Ross Dependency. New
| Zealand would have good claim. But the nearby countries mostly
| claimed areas directly south.
| Taniwha wrote:
| It does claim a slice
| omoikane wrote:
| Part of Antarctica does use New Zealand's time zone:
|
| https://brr.fyi/posts/sunset
| grenoire wrote:
| Wonderful visualisation, always wondered this one. I wish the
| nodes had the names of the capitals.
| ddalex wrote:
| They do, if you hover the mouse pointer.
| evrydayhustling wrote:
| Some things I'd love to see:
|
| - a difference metric between this coverage and the actual map
| (and country breakdown of same)
|
| - a weighted version ([1]) with weights chosen to optimize the
| above distance metric.
|
| The latter is in itself is a fun math problem -- the gradient on
| such an objective clearly exists (and the numerical gradient is
| fairly cheap). But can you prove anything about its structure? Is
| there a closed form that could be derived from the map
| information?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weighted_Voronoi_diagram
| _Microft wrote:
| What I'd suggest trying is to use the accessibility of the
| terrain (there are such maps out there) and find the closest
| capital city according to that. This is basically a global
| travel time map and I would not be too surprised if that
| matches some borders rather well.
| joe5150 wrote:
| South Africa is cheating by having three capitals.
| mbostock wrote:
| Jason also made a spherical Voronoi map with a dataset of world
| airports: https://www.jasondavies.com/maps/voronoi/airports/
|
| There's an Observable version here if you want to see an
| implementation using d3-geo-voronoi:
| https://observablehq.com/@d3/world-airports-voronoi
| alexcnwy wrote:
| It's incredible that these were created almost 10 years ago and
| yet so little of the internet uses d3 or similar interactivity
| these days.
| mbostock wrote:
| What do you mean by "so little of the internet uses d3 or
| similar interactivity"?
| madcaptenor wrote:
| The most surprising bit for me (because it really depends on the
| world being round) is Alaska - parts of which are closest to
| Tokyo, Reykjavik, or Ottawa. (No part of Alaska is closest to
| Washington.)
|
| In the US, the southwesternmost bit of Virginia is closer to 9
| other state capitals than to Virginia's capital of Richmond
| (https://cardinalnews.org/2022/02/28/ewing-is-closer-to-
| nine-...). On a world scale these numbers can get quite large -
| it looks like 33 capitals are closer to Vladivostok than Moscow
| is (https://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/159041/how-m.
| ..).
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