[roessland]

I wonder what great circle or small circle passes through the most countries. Looks like a fun optimization problem.

[mci]

I'm not sure if you have seen this: https://marcinciura.wordpress.com/2015/11/17/slicing-earth-c... — loading country polygons instead of land polygons and changing the LengthOfIntersectionInKm() function should be enough to answer your question. Be wary, however, that parts of France lie in Africa and the Americas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_department).

[rhizome]

Fun fact: St. Pierre and Miquelon was the site of the only use of the guillotine in North America.

[gsich]

just count the mainland.

[mci]

Doesn't work for island countries. Think Japan, Philippines, or Indonesia.

[gsich]

then just use the biggest islands.

[mrb]

Then you would ignore 98% of the territory of the Republic of Maldives.

[jacobolus]

Defining “great circle” gets a bit tricky for an ellipsoid. Geodesics don’t meet back up. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Long_geo...

I guess you can find the “great ellipse” on a slice passing through the center.

[askvictor]

I'm pretty sure that for this purpose, either mapping the earth to a perfect sphere, or using the slice approach (it won't be an ellipse since we're being pedantic) will answer the question.

[jacobolus]

The latitude/longitude lines in this post were very carefully chosen to just barely knick several countries’ borders and pass over small islands. Differences in the definition of the line certainly will matter for figuring out all of the edge cases here.

[gciruelos]

not really related, but i wrote this a while back: https://gciruelos.com/what-is-the-roundest-country.html

[cm2187]

Kim Jong-un optimising the impact of atomic blasts?