Egypt the Most Rectangular Country in the World…?

So, apparently, an Australian statistician by the name of David Barry posted to his blog about a friend of his who noticed that Turkey was “a remarkably rectangular country” and how that inspired him to determine which country was actually the recatangularist of them all. And Egypt won. Yay?

 

He then devised a simple algorithm to evaluate the geometric qualities of the world’s countries and rank them according to how closely they resembled a boring, old, rectangle. In fact, many Middle Eastern countries rank high on the rectangle list. Maybe that has to do with the fact that many of the borders were drawn with a ruler by a couple of white imperialists after they totally destroyed the Ottoman Empire in World War I.

 

On the bright side, the next time you and your friends are feeling bored, just remember: at least your not as bored as the Aussie who figured out which country resembled everyone else’s least favourite polygon.