Hacker News Reader

I was wondering what kind of metric could be used to visualize a nation’s ability to project power. Maybe some ratio involving the furthest distance from the capital city to the nation’s border?

I’m curious why the sqrt of the population in the denominator?

View on HN

Square root of the population is because that's what it takes to normalize large vs small countries. Imagine slicing a country into quarters; each slice has a quarter of the population and half the radius.

I think that's supposed to be read as "or"? (I momentarily had the same confusion myself.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com