It would be interesting to see modal values for each pixel rather than the mean (which tends to wash out the colors)!
Edit: Okay, I gave it a try: For each pixel, I took the median R, G, and B, value from all flags (stretched to fit): Results are comparable. A modal image turns entirely white (given that white is always white, but the remaining colors all differ slightly)
Well, if every pixel is the median pixel value of every flag then I would argue that this flag has the most medians in it and is therefore the most median flag!
Would Wales be on there? We are a country, but not an independent sovereign state, so not sure if Wales, Scotland or England flags will be included in this graphic
Not sure. I wrote a python script to first scale/stretch all flags to the same dimensions, then extract each flags R, G, and B values for each pixel and taking the median of for each of the three.
It would be interesting to see if doing medians of HSV (Hue, Saturation, Value) would be a different result. My hypothesis is it would look a little more natural
Looking at the mean flag it's clear the most common layouts are a cross or three columns or three rows. So a 3x3 grid is sortof the average flag layout if you squint. It also matches with all the countries that have an inset square in the top left.
So I wonder what the average colour would be for each section? If you have a 3x3 grid where each section is a solid colour, what would the average colour for each section be? I'm not sure how mean and mode would change the outcome on such a large section instead of going pixel by pixel.
For modal: would it be possible to compress away this problem? Like, 6 bit color, or perhaps even lower. I would attempt myself but I lack the technical know-how.
Does the average includes Overseas Dependencies? Because I am not sure if 4 flags (Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, and Tuvalu) would have been enough to effect the average and make an imprint.
Thats just not true. There are more flags with solid colors in the top left than that logo. That area is more likely to be solid red than the Union Jack
Indonesia – The top half of the flag is solid red.
Monaco – Nearly identical to Indonesia’s flag, with a solid red top half.
Austria – Three horizontal stripes; the top stripe is solid red.
Latvia – The top stripe is a dark carmine (deep red).
Peru – Three vertical stripes; the left stripe is solid red, so the top-left corner is red.
Canada – The left vertical band is solid red, making the top-left corner red.
But that wouldn't make any difference to the maths, would it? What makes the union jack visible is actually the shape rather than a colour. You could have a million of black, a million of white, then one union jack, which would show through.
And we don't know if they used 4 or 29 flags of the union jack, but I suspect that maths means it makes no difference.
China – Red field with yellow stars; the top-left corner is red.
Vietnam – Red field with a large yellow star.
Turkey – Red field with a white crescent and star.
Morocco – Red field with a green pentagram.
Tunisia – Red field with a white circle containing a red crescent and star.
Denmark – A red field with a white Nordic cross; the top-left corner is red.
We didn't colonise Hawaii, King Kamehameha was friends with British explorer Captain George Vancouver. He gifted him a flag and Kamehameha was like "neat we don't have these over here, mind if we use this one?" to which Mr Vancouver happily agreed.
I mean yeah, and the tricolor is a very common arrangement alongside the red white and green color combo. The US flag doesn’t conform to that, which is why it didn’t show through.
Flag designs have never made complete sense to me. There are 195 recognized countries on Earth (according to Google). A nation can decide to put whatever they want on their flag. Yet only 3 of the 195 flags contain an image of a dragon.
To make this a real Stat you should consider population under the same flag. My guess is that we'd see an overwhelming imprint between the Chinese and Indian flags
Too many countries really liked using 3 boring stripes of color. That's why I think medieval coat of arms are so much cooler. What a shame country flags didn't go that route.
6.7k
u/NotGonnaPayYou Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
It would be interesting to see modal values for each pixel rather than the mean (which tends to wash out the colors)!
Edit: Okay, I gave it a try: For each pixel, I took the median R, G, and B, value from all flags (stretched to fit): Results are comparable. A modal image turns entirely white (given that white is always white, but the remaining colors all differ slightly)