Portal talk:Brazil/Did you know

"...that, although Brazil is officially the fifth largest country in the world, its territory is larger than the continental United States (the third largest), as well as the added areas of the continental US, Hawaii and 2/3 of the state of Alaska?"

Um, yeah... so basically this is saying that Brazil is smaller than the U.S. That would be why it's fifth-largest and the U.S. is third

largest. Kafziel ^Talk 16:34, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The point is actually focused on the contiguous United States, which is actually considerably smaller than Brazil — because it takes the added areas of all of Hawaii (granted, not that big) and (more significantly) 2/3 of Alaska to equal the size of the Brazilian territory, and the remaining 1/3 of Alaska is what makes the US larger than Brazil. However, Brazil has no significative overseas or otherwise disjointed territory, and the normal correlation made by people would be to compare the contiguous US with the Brazilian territory when assessing the whole "larger than" affirmative. The point, obviously, would not be to deny that, all things considered, the US territory is 3rd in length in the world, while Brazil is the 5th.
This is actually a quite common piece of trivia around — but not in the US though, where I have observed in first hand that the average individual, when looking at the statistic, believes that Brazil would be [usually considerably] smaller than the Continental US (I've even heard people in the US tell me that they were under the impression that Texas was larger than Brazil by itself).
The real challenge is wording this as clearly as possible while keeping it concise, so as to fit appropriately in the Portal. Redux 23:16, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The contiguous United States is not the United States, so I don't see the relevance. The statement is phrased to imply that it's somehow inaccurate (or even interesting) that Brazil is considered the 5th largest country, but "2/3 of Alaska" isn't a measure of territory I'm aware of. So this is basically saying, "The United States is much bigger than Brazil" (because 1/3 of Alaska is a heck of a lot of land) which doesn't seem interesting at all. But I suppose it's a moot point now, anyway. Kafziel ^Talk 09:10, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As I said, this is a rather common piece of trivia, supposedly because when people think of the US territory, they don't put together Hawaii and Alaska (in those tiny boxes, as it is done in maps), they just picture the continental territory, and that's what is compared against the Brazilian territory. The curious aspect is that the continental US is considerably smaller than Brazil (because, as you put it yourself, Alaska is a heck lot of land). We welcome any rewording that would make the point clearer, of course. But it has to stay concise (3, maybe 4 lines at the most). Redux 15:07, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's really not a big deal, I just don't get it. Sure, Brazil would be bigger than the U.S. if the U.S. didn't have Alaska. And if Australia owned Antarctica they'd be bigger than Brazil. And if pigs had wings they could fly, right? Maybe it would be better to say Brazil was bigger than the U.S. until 1959, when Alaska became a state. That much is factual, and doesn't involve any imaginary exclusion of Alaska. If nothing else, the word "officially" should be taken out, since it implies that Brazil is larger in some unofficial way, which isn't true. Kafziel ^Talk 15:42, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously, the contiguous United States is not the United States, but in referring to the lower 48, I think it is a better descriptive adjective than continental because some people might interpret that to mean the 49 states minus Hawaii. Alaska may be separated from the rest of the US by British Columbia, but it is still part of the North American continent. Also, I am amazed at the number of YouTube commentators who get offended when somebody correctly points out that both Canada and China are physically bigger than the US. They will either deny this truth, or say that the US is really bigger because the enormous amount of ocean between Hawaii and the mainland actually counts as territory. P.S. Do I really need to add links to the YouTube videos where commentators actually argue about this? Edward J. Cunningham (talk) 04:17, 7 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There is no argument that the U.S. is "physically" (meaning by land area) the 3rd largest country ahead of Canada. Canada is larger than the U.S. in combined total land and water area, and is firmly ahead of both the U.S. and China in total area when including its very large non-freshwater area. There is no appreciable difference between the size of the U.S. and China save for comparing relative water area, a measure by which the U.S. is significantly larger. China is just 0.25% larger in total area when comparing total land and internal water area (excluding coastal and territorial waters). When factoring in known territorial and coastal waters for the U.S. and estimated territorial and coastal waters for China the U.S. is larger. In relative total area both countries are effectively the same, and arguing with YouTubers over it is pedantic. 66.232.212.198 (talk) 04:02, 1 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The point is not to speculate that Brazil would be bigger than the US if Alaska were to be swallowed by a colossal Tsunami tomorrow; it is an objective comparison between the contiguous US and Brazil (with the data about adding the areas of Hawaii and 2/3 of Alaska serving to demonstrate the difference in size between the two). Further, this is not something I noticed by comparing stats by myself, but rather a very common piece of trivia, as I've mentioned twice before — this is actually relatively famous in physical geography. In short, it's not something I pulled out of a hat to include here. I respect the fact that anyone, at any given time, might personally not find it of particular interest, but that is simply besides the point. That being said, if anyone has an idea to improve the clarity or general quality of the text without making it too long, by all means please take a crack at it. Redux 05:40, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't really get the point of that link - this isn't a deletion discussion. And it's not that I think the statement is unclear. I don't have any problem with it being on the portal; we're not talking about the main page here. I do take some exception with the tone, as though there's some sort of conspiracy amongst the "official" size-ologists to keep Brazil in 5th place by including Alaska when measuring the area of the United States. So I guess I will go ahead and remove that, to soften it.

I'm not lobbying for removing it based on any policy or guideline like original research. I'm just saying it's... lame, I guess. The same statement could be made for any country, if we can just remove sections of territory as we see fit. For instance, Did You Know:

...that, although the U.S. is officially the third largest country in the world, its territory is larger than continental Canada (the second largest), as well as 2/3 of the Arctic Archipelago?
...that, although Bahrain is officially the 189th largest country in the world, its territory is larger than Micronesia (the 188th largest), excluding the Yap Islands?

If having it makes you happy, it's really fine with me. I don't get it, and I guess I never will, but don't worry about it. Kafziel ^Talk 06:15, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's just your opinion (it being "lame"), I think it's pretty damn interesting that Brazil is actually the 4th largest country in the world, China the 3rd, and USA the 5th. As interesting as Ukraine being the largest European country (if we're not considering Russia obviously, which makes sense in some contexts), not France which is only larger when it's colonies are taken into account.

Bahrain and Micronesia are on the bottom of the list; here, we're talking about the top 5 and how what the majority of people think of when we talk about the largest countries is the contiguous territory, not some detached piece of land far away from the country. This means a complete change in the numbers 3 to 5 of the top 5 so yeah, again, it's pretty damn interesting. 186.224.149.181 (talk) 04:26, 11 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I know that this is like 10 years too late for this discussion, but couldn't you simply just reword it to; "...that, although the U.S. is the third largest country in the world, Brazil (the fifth largest) is considerably larger than the continental United States." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.179.139.186 (talk) 14:10, 9 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The continental United States includes Alaska, and is significantly larger than Brazil by both total area and land area. 66.232.212.198 (talk) 04:14, 1 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Alaska is unique among the U.S. states because it is part of the North American continent, which means that it is linked to Canada and therefore part of the "Continental United States". However, Alaska is not part of the "contiguous United States", because it is not directly linked to the lower 48 states. 2603:6011:B922:2400:3502:A117:180D:2661 (talk) 06:03, 7 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

“interestingly, although Brazil is the fifth largest country in the world, it is 431,000 square kilometers (166,000 sq mi) larger than the contiguous (“lower 48”) United States (the third largest country)”

It’s a moderately interesting factoid and is both accurate and unambiguous. The relative size of countries, say, in the top ten (proportion of land vs water surface area, size when overseas territories are excluded etc etc) seem fair game for published trivia and are not necessarily inherently pointless in a way that the relative size of the 148th country if I snip a bit off occupied by a US air base rendering it technically slightly smaller territorially, and oh by the way the sea level has risen with global warming so the land area is now fractionally less and therefore it’s almost the same size as the 149th probably isn’t so relevant or interesting to the general reader though super-nerds would probably lap that sort of thing up too. 2A00:23C4:6B07:5301:E5FE:EDD6:FFFA:6BA8 (talk) 14:26, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]