Wednesday, January 13, 2010

The Wednesday Quiz I:7 -- Name That Country!

The story this far: At the halfway point of the Wednesday Quiz First Season, the top five contenders are DrSchnell (510), la gringissima (500.83), Mrs.5000 (450), Cartophiliac (435), and Elaine (421.67). Remember, only the best eight of twelve scores count, so there's still plenty of time to catch up. Having said that, DrSchnell and la gringa already have lots of 90+ scores in the bag and, unless they stumble, would seem to have some fabulous prizes in their futures.



The Wednesday Quiz -- Season I -- Quiz 7

Name That Country!

The Wednesday Quiz is a test of knowledge and intuition. Looking up answers or asking your buddy is an instance of unmitigated evil. Questions about the rules are answered here.

Following last week's popular book-related Quiz -- atractively visual, easy to complete, on a subject of general interest -- why not keep the momentum going with an abstract numerical quiz that requires cumbersome, time-consuming effort to complete! Awesome idea!

This week's puzzle is kind of a matching dealie. Below, you will find five basic statistics for each of ten different countries. Your job is to identify the country. Here's a list to choose from:

Angola, Canada, Chile, Iceland, India, Iran, Malaysia, Mexico, Mongolia, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, The United States of America.
That's a list of thirteen, so obviously you'll end up not using three of 'em. Bon chance!

Name That Country!


1.

Area: 92,090 km2 (rank:110th)
Population: 10.4 million (rank: 77th)
- Population Density: 114/km2 (rank: 87th)
GDP: $236 billion (rank: 46th)
- Per capita: $22,238 (rank: 39th)


---------------------

2.

Area: 1,246,700 km2 (rank: 23rd)
Population: 18.5 million (rank: 59th)
- Population Density: 14.8/km2 (rank: 199th)
GDP: $105 billion (rank: 62nd)
- Per capita: $6,251 (rank: 98th)

---------------------------

3.

Area: 1,564,115.75 km2 (rank: 19th)
Population: 2.7 million (rank: 139th)
- Population Density: 1.7/km2 (rank: 235th)
GDP: $9.4 billion (rank: 136th)
- Per capita: $3,547 (rank: 124th)

-------------------------------

4.

Area: 1,972,550 km2 (rank: 15th)
Population: 111 million (rank: 11th)
- Population Density: 55/km2 (rank: 142nd)
GDP: $1.563 trillion (rank: 11th)
- Per capita: $14,534 (rank: 55th)

-----------------------------------

5.

Area: 329,845 km2 (rank: 66th)
Population: 28 million (rank: 43rd)
- Population Density: 85.8/km2 (rank: 114th)
GDP : $384 billion (rank: 30th)
- Per capita: $14,081 (rank: 59th)

-------------------------------

6.

Area: 1,648,195 km2 (rank: 18th)
Population: 74 million (rank: 18th)
- Population Density 45/km2 (rank: 163rd)
GDP: $830 billion (rank: 17th)
- Per capita: $11,202 (rank: 73rd)

-----------------------

7.

Area: 103,001 km2 (rank: 107th)
Population: 319 thousand (rank: 172nd)
- Population Density: 3.1/km2 (rank: 230th)
GDP (2008): $12.805 billion (rank: 134th)
- Per capita $40,471 (rank: 10th)

---------------------------

8.

Area: 756,950 km2 (rank: 38th)
Population: 17 million (rank: 60th)
- Population Density 22/km2 (rank: 194th)
GDP: $243 billion (rank: 43rd)
- Per capita $14,529 (rank: 56th)

------------------------------

9.

Area: 268,680 km2 (rank: 75th)
Population 4.3 million (123rd)
- Population Density 16.1/km2 (rank: 201st)
GDP: $116 billion (rank: 60th)
- Per capita $27,083 (rank: 34th)

---------------------------------

10.

Area: 9,984,670 km2 (rank: 2nd)
Population: 33,868,000 (rank: 36th)
- Population Density 3.2/km2 (rank: 219th)
GDP: $1.3 trillion (rank: 14th)
- Per capita $39,098 (rank: 13th)


Submit your answers in the comments!

18 comments:

Elaine said...

I have a comment, but it's not terribly polite.
Square KILOMETERS? We don't do no stinkin' kilometers!

1.
2. Maylasia
3.
4. Canada
5.
6.
7. Iceland
8
9.
10. Mexico

You know, I have no clue. The US has 300million +, India has to have more than that...so I eliminated them. But these are not figures that give me a lot of information (of the sort that I take notice of, that is)...so I think my standing is uh, endangered. Moribund. Defunct.
Nighty-night.

Christine M. said...

1. Portugal
2. Chile
3. Mongolia
4. India
5. Malaysia
6. Mexico
7. Iceland
8. Iran
9. New Zealand
10. Canada

DrSchnell said...

What's with this metric shit anyway? This is 'merica!

1. Portugal
2. Angola
3. Mongolia
4. Mexico
5. Chile
6. Malaysia
7. Iceland
8. Iran
9. New Zealand
10. O Canada!

I know that India and USA are definitely unused because none of the populations are big enough, and Singapore is unused because none of the areas are small enough.

Cartophiliac said...

I resisted the urge to create a spread sheet and just did some process of elimination (and plenty of guessing)

1. Portugal
2. Malaysia
3. Angola
4. Iran
5. Chile
6. Mexico
7. Iceland
8. Mongolia
9. New Zealand
10. Canada

Elizabeth said...

By dint of meticulous comparison of area/population density, and a cross-check of GDP, I believe I have successfully completely screwed up all of my answers.

1 - Malaysia
2 - Iran
3 - Mongolia
4 - New Zealand
5 - Angola
6 - Mexico
7 - Chile
8 - Iceland
9 - Portugal
10 - Canada

Nichim said...

yiokes. I'll be over here, reading the bible blog.

margaret said...

Angola,,, Iceland,, Iran, Malaysia,, Mongolia

1. Singapore
2. Mexico
3. Chile
4. USA
5. Iceland
6. India
7. New Zealand
8. Mongolia
9. Portugal
10. Canada

Did I get ANY right?!

Ben said...

1. Singapore
2. Chile
3. Mongolia
4. Malaysia
5. Portugal
6. New Zealand
7. Iceland
8. Angola
9. Iran
10. Canada

Dude, I know you have to make this hard because you have so many geographically knowledgeable readers, but I would have had a hard enough time with this one even if the ratio of answers to possible answers was 1:1!

sister jen said...

1 Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
2 L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
3 Joseph Heller, Catch-22
4 Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind
...

I liked last week's quiz better, so I thought I would just take it again.

UnwiseOwl said...

Argh...You took the three I was most likely to get in that quiz and took them out! I knew where the US should be, and it wasn't, there was nothing with anything anywhere near the population of India and isn't Singapore less than 1000km^2?
Thus, with process of elimination and armed with only my years of trawling atlas' for fun...

1. Portugal. Actually, I didn't like this here, but I liked it less anywhere else. I thought it was bigger than that.
2. Angola. Go for a really poor one and you can't go wrong, unless you're Angolan.
3. Mongolia. Another I had no idea about, it's always dwarfed by China and Russia, but I have the feeling it's pretty big and mostly desert, so low density feels right.
4. Mexico. Hmm, this might be 6.
5. Malaysia...oh dear, this could be so wrong, crazy island nations...
6. Chile. Hmm, this might be 4.
7. Iceland. I do like tiny populations.
8. Iran. Had no idea where to put this, so it ended up in the last free spot.
9. New Zealand. Go, my Pacific neighbours, at least you've ensured I get at least one point.
10. Oh, Canada!

UnwiseOwl said...

Oh, and thanks for using a real measurement system and doing it in kilometers. I mostly used the relative sizes rather than the actual ones, but it's nice not to have to convert in my head. You guys really ought to catch up with the sensible countries (like France and Australia, oh dear...) and convert.

Aviatrix said...

Hard one. My own country was a gimme, which then served as the benchmark for the others, but that didn't help as much as I'd hoped. I learned that I don't know the relative sizes of countries from continent to continent, especially islands.

1. Portugal - I thought Portugal was bigger than Iceland, but Iceland has to be the one with the freaky GDP.
2. Angola - I thought Angola and Mongolia were both large sparse and poor
3. Mongolia - But if one is going to have more people, then I'm picking the warm one.
4. Mexico - large, populous and not too badly off
5. Malaysia - possibly I have it confused with Singapore
6. Iran - large & halfway well off
7. Iceland - small but low density, high tech and no aboriginal underclass
8. Chile - hard to estimate the relative size of such a skinny country
9. New Zealand - Four million people & 40 million sheep
10. Canada 10M km/34M pop/3.2 dens/$1.3T/$39k p.c. - my benchmark

mrs.5000 said...

1 Singapore
2 Malaysia
3 Mongolia
4 Mexico
5 New Zealand
6 Iran
7 Iceland
8 Chile
9 Portugal
10 Canada
Yeah, that wasn't too brutal or anything.

The Calico Cat said...

I give up. I'm off to read about a boy who (used to) quilts.

Michael5000 said...

And the answers were:

1. Portugal
2. Angola
3. Mongolia
4. Mexico
5. Malaysia
6. Iran
7. Iceland
8. Chile
9. New Zealand
10. Canada

Michael5000 said...

That was kind of brutal! Having written the quiz a few weeks ago, I got 8/10, reversing Chile and Iran. The Unwise Owl did the same thing. Aviatrix did not, however, so it's a big win for Canada in this week's Wednesday Quiz as she scores a perfect 10/10.

Next week: something less laborious.

Aviatrix said...

Ooyah! I finally get a point on the board. I'm still surprised that all that skinny adds up to so much area for Chile, and by the huge population of Angola.

KarmaSartre said...

Since the airing of Dark Angel, the word "dealie" has been officially changed to "dealio".