Biggest, longest, highest, emptiest

Why a list is a good way to learn a map

A map shows you where things are. A list shows you how they compare, and comparing is what makes a place stick in your memory. Nobody remembers that Canada covers nine and a half million square kilometres, but everybody remembers that it is second only to Russia — and once you know that, the shape at the top of the map has a size attached to it.

Each list here is built the same way: a real figure for every entry, sorted, with nothing left out to make the ranking prettier. Every name links to the page for that place, so a list is also a way in — start at the top, follow whichever name you have never heard of, and you have learned something the list itself was not about.

Two lists that surprise almost everyone

The list of the emptiest countries catches people out, because emptiness is not the same as size. Mongolia has fewer people per square kilometre than almost anywhere on Earth, and it is not a small country at all — it simply has an enormous amount of grassland and very few towns. Next to it in the ranking sit Greenland and Namibia, one mostly ice and the other mostly desert, for the same reason from opposite directions.

The list of countries with the most neighbours is the other one. It is not won by the biggest country but by whichever one has the most land borders drawn against it, which is why China and Russia sit at the top together and why an island the size of a continent can have none at all. Australia has no neighbours by this measure, and neither does Iceland.

What the rankings do not tell you

A rank is a single number standing in for a whole place, and single numbers hide things. The most crowded country on a list may be almost empty across most of its land, with everyone living in one valley. The longest river depends on which stream someone decided to call its source. Where a figure is genuinely disputed, the page for that place says so instead of picking a winner quietly.