The largest city in each 10x10 degree latitude/longitude box

Re:The largest city in each 10x10 degree latitude/longitude box by foota on Thursday June 25, 2020 @07:49AM (#23639535)

I think something more interesting might be like a voronoi diagram of all cities such that the city is in like the top 5 within a 1000 miles radius or something (or just that but without the voronoi part). This should preserve the fact that only the largest cities in some area are present, but eliminate the arbitrariness of the boundaries. I think you would want to compute this with a sweep line algorithm.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The largest city in each 10x10 degree latitude/longitude box by bnjmn on Thursday June 25, 2020 @02:26PM (#23643844)

This isn't exactly what you asked for, but it seems pretty relevant to your stated interests: https://www.jasondavies.com/maps/voronoi/capitals/

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The largest city in each 10x10 degree latitude/longitude box by foota on Thursday June 25, 2020 @04:24PM (#23645250)

My head nearly exploded trying to position the globe in the rotation I wanted :-) Neat though, thanks for sharing!

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The largest city in each 10x10 degree latitude/longitude box by rjeli on Thursday June 25, 2020 @10:30PM (#23648117)

Generally with orbit controls you can drag circles with your mouse to roll, taking advantage of the noncommutativity of SO(3)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The largest city in each 10x10 degree latitude/longitude box by incompatible on Thursday June 25, 2020 @08:07AM (#23639677)

A map projection that preserves area would be better, otherwise there's an excessive number of cities in the far northern hemisphere, and a lack of detail in the tropics.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The largest city in each 10x10 degree latitude/longitude box by toxik on Thursday June 25, 2020 @08:46AM (#23640032)

Meanwhile, neither Sweden’s nor Norway’s capital is in the map. But two smaller Norwegian cities are.

I think this just teaches you the issue with discretization.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The largest city in each 10x10 degree latitude/longitude box by ewendel on Thursday June 25, 2020 @09:03AM (#23640203)

There are in fact five small Norwegian towns on this map.

Vadsø, Hammerfest, Trondheim, Bergen and Longyearbyen.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The largest city in each 10x10 degree latitude/longitude box by runarberg on Thursday June 25, 2020 @04:36PM (#23645395)

Denmark has a funnier case. There are 6 cities/town within the Kingdom of Denmark with 0 of them in Denmark. (5 in Greenland and 1 in The Faeroe Islands; Iceland belonging to the Kingdom until 1944 has 2)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The largest city in each 10x10 degree latitude/longitude box by jononor on Thursday June 25, 2020 @11:47AM (#23642005)

Trondheim and Bergen rank 3 and 2 in Norway (after the capital, Oslo). Some 200k people live in each. Not so small by scandinavian standards.

But Vadsø, Hammerfest and Longyearbyen are tiny - population 2-12 thousand.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The largest city in each 10x10 degree latitude/longitude box by marcosdumay on Thursday June 25, 2020 @01:09PM (#23642887)

Cue to Sucuriju in Brazil, that has less than 1k inhabitants.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The largest city in each 10x10 degree latitude/longitude box by Tempest1981 on Thursday June 25, 2020 @09:04AM (#23640215)

I like xkcd's description of Mercator: https://xkcd.com/977/

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The largest city in each 10x10 degree latitude/longitude box by xvedejas on Thursday June 25, 2020 @10:20AM (#23641048)

Mercator can be a very useful map. Angles are not distorted. It's also very good at low distortion at small scales. As you zoom in on a point, the area distortion diminishes. Once your area of interest is around 300km wide, the area distortion is only about one part in one thousand. It converges very quickly on a "true" representation of the earth.

Mercator's ubiquity isn't due to people who "aren't into maps" but rather because its strengths are really powerful in many use cases. Imagine the confusing situation if, in your favorite Maps app, North weren't always directly up, intersections met at wrong angles, and square buildings didn't always look square.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The largest city in each 10x10 degree latitude/longitude box by andreareina on Thursday June 25, 2020 @11:45AM (#23641988)

Those strengths being in navigation: straight lines in Mercator maps correspond to a constant bearing in the real world, which is really handy when your ship needs to cross thousands of kilometers of ocean.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The largest city in each 10x10 degree latitude/longitude box by foota on Thursday June 25, 2020 @11:40AM (#23641930)

I think the idea if to show the most populous cities in some area, not the density of highly populated cities, otherwise I would agree.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The largest city in each 10x10 degree latitude/longitude box by mjd on Thursday June 25, 2020 @12:21PM (#23642400)

If you did it, I'd enjoy seeing it.

[ Parent | on HN ]