Which country is roundest in the world, shaped like a rectangle in the world?

Australian statistician David Barry recently carried out a project to compare so-called 'rectangles of countries'.

The idea for Mr. Barry's project began when he came across a Facebook comment from a friend claiming that Turkey is "a country with a distinctive rectangular shape." At that time, he did some research on the Internet and realized that there was no accurate source of 'countries with very straight borders'. So he started his own project to find the country with the most rectangular shape in the world.

According to research by Australian statistician, Egypt, with a rate of up to 95.5%, is the country with the most rectangular border shape in the world. The next countries are Vatican City, Sint Maarten, Lesotho, Yemen, Ghana, North Macedonia, Côte d'Ivoire, Poland and Nauru. Meanwhile, Türkiye ranks only 15th in the list of countries with a rectangular shape.

 

Barry admits that the algorithm he used in the study gives imperfect results, some errors can be made especially when evaluating countries whose borders are made up of many smaller islands, as is the case with Italy.

Which country is the roundest in the world?

Barry's project on the 'rectangular country' inspired Gonzalo Ciruelos to find the answer to another geographical question: Which country is most similar to a circle?

According to a post by Ciruelos, Sierra Leone, which has a roundness of 93.4%, is the most circular country in the world. Standing in next positions are Nauru, Zimbabwe, Vatican City, Poland, the disputed Scarborough reef territory, Côte d'Ivoire, Suriname, Swaziland and Uruguay.