Do you find yourself getting the urge to move as far away from everything and everyone that you can?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Last edited Thu Jul 19, 2018, 04:40 PM - Edit history (1)

Wonkblog Analysis

Using the best data possible, we set out to find the middle of nowhere

By Andrew Van Dam February 20 [link:[e-mail]|Email the author]

In a triumph of data collection and analysis, a team of researchers based at Oxford University has built the tools necessary to calculate how far any dot on a map is from a city — or anything else. ... The research, published in Nature last month, allows us to pin down a question that has long evaded serious answers: Where is the middle of nowhere?

To know, you’d have to catalogue and calculate the navigation challenges presented by the planet's complex, varied terrain and the dirt tracks, roads, railroads and waterways that crisscross it. You'd then need to string those calculations together, testing every possible path from every point to every other point.

That is pretty much what the folks did at the Malaria Atlas Project, a group at Oxford’s Big Data Institute that studies the intersection of disease, geography and demographics. The huge team — 22 authors are credited — spent years building a globe-spanning map outlining just how long it takes to cross any spot on the planet based on its transportation types, vegetation, slope, elevation and more. Those spots, or pixels, represent about a square kilometer.

Armed with this data, and hours and hours of computer time, The Washington Post processed every pixel and every populated place in the contiguous United States to find the one that best represents the “middle of nowhere.” ... Congratulations, Glasgow, Mont.!
....


....


....


....

Laris Karklis contributed to this report.

Andrew Van Dam covers data and economics. He previously worked for the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe and the Idaho Press-Tribune. Follow https://twitter.com/andrewvandam

[elleng]

1. I'm here,

and rain's gonna begin Saturday!

[vlyons]

2. No, I just spent 15 years living on a 50 acre ranch in east Texas

I couldn't see my neighbors. I'm 71 now and can longer run a ranch. But I am ever so grateful that I had the opportunity to do that. It was wonderful. I live in Dallas now. I am content.

[Aristus]

3. My idea of a safe getaway is a place like Liechtenstein.

A stable, prosperous microstate where I can speak the language (German), and is far away from the madness of our dissolving republic.

I couldn't ever consider a getaway to rural America. The Deliverance crowd and their provincial worldview are what I want to get away from.

[Different Drummer]

4. "The Deliverance crowd and their provincial worlview are what I want to get away from."

Same here!

[eppur_se_muova]

5. Woo-hoo, Heard Island !

The only one of those five places I've never heard of. Now I want to know more.

[BigmanPigman]

6. The Pitcairn Islands have only 50 people there.

They were descendents of The Bounty (Mutiny On The...) and there were about 250 but that number has dwindled now to only 50. They WANT people to move there to save their future.

[GeorgeGist]

7. I'm heading out Sat ...

for 2 weeks in the arrowhead of Minnesota; only 20 miles from Canada. Taking passport just in case things go south in a hurry.