Evil aliens have decided to kill everyone on Earth! Fortunately, they've given you two minutes to save as many as you can. All you have to do is name a country to save everyone in it.
Agreed (sort-of *). The quiz-setter in this case seems to have interpreted "Average" to mean "Median," which: eh.
If you take the median country (by land area) of the 196 Jetpunk-recognized countries, then indeed you end up with Malawi, and taking the 10 on either side of that - for a total of 21 countries - you get exactly the list in this quiz.
Is the median the average? Eh, I dunno. You can argue it. But it's not entirely uncontroversial (case in point: the comments in this quiz) and if that's what the quiz-setter wanted, they should have explicitly said so.
But punting the countries into a spreadsheet and taking the mean area I actually get ~ 681,500km² (!!), the closest country to which is, uh... Australia. 😆
So by that measure, the 21 closest to the average are actually just the 21 largest countries. So I understand why the quiz-setter didn't want that. But again the quiz title/description should have then explicitly referenced "median."
If you take the median country (by land area) of the 196 Jetpunk-recognized countries, then indeed you end up with Malawi, and taking the 10 on either side of that - for a total of 21 countries - you get exactly the list in this quiz.
Is the median the average? Eh, I dunno. You can argue it. But it's not entirely uncontroversial (case in point: the comments in this quiz) and if that's what the quiz-setter wanted, they should have explicitly said so.
But punting the countries into a spreadsheet and taking the mean area I actually get ~ 681,500km² (!!), the closest country to which is, uh... Australia. 😆
So by that measure, the 21 closest to the average are actually just the 21 largest countries. So I understand why the quiz-setter didn't want that. But again the quiz title/description should have then explicitly referenced "median."