“our impressions are created by which countries have the most land area”
If you simply do the number count, you still find the correlation at more than 5 sigma level. I doubt that most people would care to read the full statistical analysis, which is why I’ve just shown the maps.
“Considering two completely arbitrary numbers (45%, 10%),”
Any thresholds I would use to color the maps might seem arbitrary. The reason I chose 45 and 10, rather than anything else, are large divides that exist between the two groups of countries. I found no countries that fall in the ranges of 20-45 and 6-10% (it follows that using any other threshold within these ranges does not affect the coloring).
“grouping together East and West Germany”
Taking historical considerations into account rather than taking the present borders would give me too much liberty to play with the data. The overall result, however, might be the enhancement of the effect. For instance, the current outliers – Protestant Finland and catholic Austria and Belgium might be explained by their history (in the former Protestantism was forced by the ruling Swedes, in the latter the initially successful Protestantism was suppressed by Habsburgs, the catholic champions of Europe).
“most variables in Europe tend to be somewhat continuous geographically”
Dependence of our opinions on seemingly unrelated factors, such as geographic origins, is what I wanted to explore.
“our impressions are created by which countries have the most land area”
If you simply do the number count, you still find the correlation at more than 5 sigma level. I doubt that most people would care to read the full statistical analysis, which is why I’ve just shown the maps.
“Considering two completely arbitrary numbers (45%, 10%),”
Any thresholds I would use to color the maps might seem arbitrary. The reason I chose 45 and 10, rather than anything else, are large divides that exist between the two groups of countries. I found no countries that fall in the ranges of 20-45 and 6-10% (it follows that using any other threshold within these ranges does not affect the coloring).
“grouping together East and West Germany”
Taking historical considerations into account rather than taking the present borders would give me too much liberty to play with the data. The overall result, however, might be the enhancement of the effect. For instance, the current outliers – Protestant Finland and catholic Austria and Belgium might be explained by their history (in the former Protestantism was forced by the ruling Swedes, in the latter the initially successful Protestantism was suppressed by Habsburgs, the catholic champions of Europe).
“most variables in Europe tend to be somewhat continuous geographically”
Dependence of our opinions on seemingly unrelated factors, such as geographic origins, is what I wanted to explore.