| In honor of Flag Day, we’re featuring a map today that plots the average color of the world’s sovereign flags by latitude. Reddit user u/richieahb created the map exactly 364 days ago after the World Cup match between Spain and Portugal. The two rivals are, of course, right next to each other, and as such share the same latitude. Meanwhile, the flags of the two nations are each over 50% red, leading u/richieahb to wonder whether there is a general correlation between latitude and flag color— do warmer countries use warmer colors in their flags? The resulting map displays the average color of all of the flags at each latitude without taking into account the physical size of the countries involved; new bands of color start at each border between countries.
Though the map presents an appealing illustration and an interesting motivating question, there are a few noticeable problems at play. Any kudos for including New Zealand is cancelled out by the obvious absence of Japan, though according to u/richieahb, its flag colors were still included in the calculations even though the image was left out. Meanwhile, other islands such as Hawaii, Cyprus, Sardinia, Corsica, and much of the Caribbean are also nowhere to be found. All in all, this map is eye-catching, and to some extent informative, but it certainly could be improved by the addition of a little more detail.
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Written by Nigel Jaffe |
