Reference chart
Country Size Comparison Chart
By &Pixels, the studio that builds MyCalculator.to. Areas are total area including inland water, as published in standard references.
The fifteen largest countries by area, and the table nobody assembles: what a world map appears to show against what is actually the case.
The largest countries by area
| Rank | Country | Square km | Square miles |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Russia | 17,098,242 | 6,601,665 |
| 2 | Canada | 9,984,670 | 3,855,100 |
| 3 | United States | 9,833,517 | 3,796,742 |
| 4 | China | 9,596,960 | 3,705,407 |
| 5 | Brazil | 8,515,767 | 3,287,956 |
| 6 | Australia | 7,692,024 | 2,969,907 |
| 7 | India | 3,287,263 | 1,269,219 |
| 8 | Argentina | 2,780,400 | 1,073,500 |
| 9 | Kazakhstan | 2,724,900 | 1,052,100 |
| 10 | Algeria | 2,381,741 | 919,595 |
| 11 | DR Congo | 2,344,858 | 905,355 |
| 12 | Saudi Arabia | 2,149,690 | 830,000 |
| 13 | Mexico | 1,964,375 | 758,449 |
| 14 | Indonesia | 1,904,569 | 735,358 |
| 15 | Sudan | 1,861,484 | 718,723 |
Two notes on that list. The United States and China trade third and fourth place depending on whether coastal and territorial waters are counted, so a source that puts them the other way round is using a different definition rather than a different measurement. And Greenland, at 2,166,086 square kilometres, would sit twelfth if it were a country. It is an autonomous territory of Denmark, so it is not on the list, which is also why it is the example everyone reaches for when arguing about maps.
The calculators behind this
What the map shows against what is true
| On a Mercator map | Actually |
|---|---|
| Greenland about the size of Africa | Africa is roughly 14 times larger |
| Russia nearly twice Africa | Africa is about 1.8 times larger than Russia |
| Canada comparable to Africa | Africa is about 3 times larger |
| Alaska larger than Mexico | Mexico is larger, by about 14 percent |
| Scandinavia larger than India | India is nearly 3 times larger |
| Greenland dwarfing DR Congo | DR Congo is the larger of the two |
Why the distortion happens
Mercator was drawn for navigation, and it does one thing supremely well: a straight line on it is a constant compass bearing. Buying that property costs area. Lines of longitude converge towards the poles on a globe and are drawn parallel on the map, so everything is stretched sideways by the secant of its latitude, then stretched the same amount vertically to keep the shapes from looking wrong.
Stretch a country in both directions and the area it covers goes as the square. That is the whole explanation, and it is a number rather than an opinion.
| Latitude | Stretched by | Area exaggerated |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 1.00x | 1.0x |
| 30 | 1.15x | 1.3x |
| 45 | 1.41x | 2.0x |
| 60 | 2.00x | 4.0x |
| 70 | 2.92x | 8.5x |
| 80 | 5.76x | 33.2x |
Greenland runs from about 60 degrees north to 83, so every part of it is inflated between four and thirty times over. Africa sits on the equator and is drawn almost true. Put those two facts together and the most famous illusion in cartography stops being surprising.
How to compare honestly
- Compare areas, not map shapes. Square kilometres or square miles. A shape on a Mercator map is not evidence of anything.
- Check the latitude of each country. The further from the equator, the more a flat map has inflated it.
- Square the stretch to get the area error. A country drawn twice too wide is also drawn twice too tall, so it covers four times the space.
- Watch what the figure includes. Some published totals count inland and coastal waters and some do not, which is the whole US and China argument.
- Divide rather than eyeball. Ratios are the only honest comparison. Africa over Greenland is 14, and no map will tell you that.
To put two countries side by side with the ratio worked out for you, the country size comparison does exactly that. For distance rather than area, the distance between cities calculator measures along the great circle, which is the other thing a flat map misrepresents, and the world population clock is a reminder that area and population rank almost nothing in the same order.
Formula & Methodology
Did you know? Area is not the only thing a Mercator map misrepresents. The shortest route between two cities is an arc on the globe, so a flight from London to Tokyo passes near the Arctic while the straight line drawn on the map crosses central Asia. The map is correct about bearing and wrong about nearly everything else.
Sources
- CIA World Factbook, country area figures including inland water
- United Nations Statistics Division, surface area by country and region
- Standard cartographic treatment of the Mercator scale factor as the secant of latitude