Valeriepieris circle
The Valeriepieris circle[1][2][3] is a South China Sea-centered circular region on the world map that is about 4,000 kilometers (2,500 mi) in radius and contains more than half the world’s population.[1] It was named after the Reddit username of Ken Myers, a Texas ESL teacher who first drew attention to the phenomenon in 2013.[4] The map became a meme and was featured in numerous forms of media.[5][6][7]

In 2015, the circle was tested by Danny Quah, who verified the claim but moved the circle slightly to exclude most of Japan, and used a globe model rather than a map projection as well as more specific calculations. He calculated that, as of 2015, half the world's population lived within a 3,300-kilometer (2,050 mi) radius of the city of Mong Khet in Myanmar.[1]
The most common visual of the circle, originally used by Myers and also featured by io9[8] and Tech in Asia,[9] used the Winkel tripel projection.
References
- The world’s tightest cluster of people, Danny Quah, London School of Economics and Political Science
- More Than Half the World's Population Lives Inside This Circle, Condé Nast Traveler
- A Small Circle in Asia Contains More Than Half the World's Population, HowStuffWorks - Science
- After seeing a recent post about the population of Indonesia, this occurred to me, Reddit
- The Majority of the World’s Population Lives in This Circl, Visual Capitalist
- 40 Maps That Explain the World, The Washington Post
- Everybody Lives in Asia, Slate
- More than half of the world's population lives inside this circle, io9
- If More Than Half the Population of the World Lives in This Circle, Asia is the Future of Startups, Tech in Asia