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posted by janrinok on Saturday January 07 2017, @07:59AM   Printer-friendly
from the in-the-center-of-course dept.

Where is the geographic center of a state, country or a continent?

It's a question fraught with uncertainty. Do you include water in your calculation? What about islands? What happens when the shoreline shifts?

The U.S. Geological Survey alluded to these complexities in a 1964 report on the centers of states, which opened by stating, "There is no generally accepted definition of geographic center, and no completely satisfactory method for determining it." More recently, various representatives of the agency have given quotes to newspapers saying much the same, hedging.

But to University at Buffalo geologist Peter Rogerson, PhD, the challenge of finding a middle doesn't mean you shouldn't try.

"There are all these people out there saying, 'There's no real good way to do this,'" says Rogerson, a SUNY Distinguished Professor of geography in UB's College of Arts and Sciences. He respectfully disagrees: "As a geographer, my feeling is that if we want to come up with a good way of defining a center, we can and we should."

In a 2015 paper in The Professional Geographer, an academic journal, Rogerson describes a new method for pinpointing the heart of a spatial entity. The approach improves on past techniques, he says, by taking the curvature of the Earth into account appropriately and by identifying geographic centers using a definition that's mathematically sound.

In late 2016, he employed his method to find the heart of North America. The result was serendipitous: According to his calculations, the center of the continent is in a place called Center, a town of 570 people in North Dakota.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @08:15AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @08:15AM (#450655)

    Ha! Good luck finding out who named a town 115 years ago. They're dead and their stroke of genius will never be explained.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @08:21AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @08:21AM (#450657)

    What's to explain about the name of a town in the middle of nowhere?

    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @08:26AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @08:26AM (#450659)

      Why don't you go back in time to 1920 and rape the frozen corpse of Hazel Miner. She was only 16 years old when she died of hypothermia. Young girls are your fetish aren't they.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @08:28AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @08:28AM (#450660)

        How will raping a dead girl after the town was named help determine how the town was named? Stay on task, idiot.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @08:30AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @08:30AM (#450661)

          I'm stealing your time machine and going back to make the 1900s great again by raping ugly young girls!

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @08:33AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @08:33AM (#450662)

            Good luck starting the time machine because the ignition is keyed to my colonic map.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @08:35AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @08:35AM (#450664)

              That's why I brought the anal probe. Your ass is mine!

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @08:38AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @08:38AM (#450665)

                Why are there olives lodged in my rectum?