Recently a lot of videos have popped Up for me claiming that you can’t accurately measure the coastline of a landmass cause the smaller of a “ruler” you use, the longer of a measure you get due to the smaller nooks and crannies you have to measure but i don’t get how this is a mathematical problem and not an “of course i won’t measure every single pebble on the coastline down to atom size” problem”. I get that you can’t measure a fractal’s side length, but a coastline is not a fractal
In: Mathematics
A coastline has the same property that makes fractals problematic. The finer the details you measure, the longer the coastline will appear. Of course you won’t measure every pebble, but are you measuring in 1 meter intervals? 10 meter intervals? You’ll get very different answers.
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