Anders Sundell Profile picture
Political scientist at @uniofgothenburg doing research on representation for a living, and #dataviz for fun. https://t.co/ffGBkadYB4 https://t.co/gaoXUXRF2l

Jul 13, 2023, 12 tweets

I used an algorithm to find the countries that look the most like each other. All countries were rescaled to have the same area, and the algorithm could rotate them to find the best fit. Sweden's best match is Nepal 🧵

The UK is tricky, but a slightly smaller Finland is a decent match:

If you think about it, Lithuania looks a bit like Brazil. If it was 129 times larger.

Chile is unique, so it doesn't have a good match, of course. But if we put Morocco there in the middle we can at least cover 53%.

If Rwanda was 300 times larger, it could be its own continent.

The best match for the US is Saudi Arabia. (Just forget about Alaska)

It's hard to find good fits for countries spread out over several islands. But if you just fill in the Cook strait New Zealand is actually pretty similar to Togo.

The best match among all countries was North Macedonia - Lesotho, with 93% overlap. But their shapes are so blob-like it still feels a bit underwhelming.

Iceland's best match: South Korea. Pretty good! @AlbinaIcelander

Argentina and Lebanon, the cone-shaped countries @AbateGamerYT

The Netherlands' best match: Sri Lanka
@simoneetreat

Italy is a bit disappointing: No toe, heel or football. @BootsPlatypus

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