The Coastline Paradox

On first reflection, if someone asked you the question: “How long the coastline of Great Britain?” (or any other landmass for that matter) You’d probably give it your best guess and return an integer in miles or kilometres. The true answer however, is that it depends! Determining the length of a countries coastline is nowhere near as simple as it would first appear. In 1951, Lewis Fry Richardson, a mathematician and pacifist was studying armed conflict. More specifically, he was trying to answer the hypothesis of whether the length of border shared by two countries had any bearing upon the likelihood of them going to war. <a href="https://medium.com/swlh/the-coastline-paradox-de3adee92b65">Website</a>