Winter’s Haven

I’ve been playing around with Wolfram Alpha, which is fun and potentially useful. I was a bit disappointed, however, that my first attempt to trip it up succeeded. Asking it “What is the length of the coast of Iceland?” produces an answer, 4970 km, which is precise, definite, and largely meaningless.

The problem is that the measured length of an island’s coastline depends on the scale at which you measure it. Using a shorter ruler to measure the coastline captures smaller nooks, and so the measured length of the coast increases as the length of the ruler used decreases. Wikipedia provides an excellent visual presentation of the problem. Consequentially, it’s more or less meaningless to state that the coast of Iceland is 4970 km long without stating the length of the ruler used to produce that number. Wolfram really ought to know better.

This entry was posted 2009-May-18 and is filed under Mathematics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.