Look-alikes · Mauritania · Saudi Arabia
Mauritania vs Saudi Arabia
Two copies of one picture are 0% apart and the widest pair in the world is 100%.
Mauritania and Saudi Arabia are 37% apart. They are closer than 98% of the flag pairs in the world.
Where the difference is
Each colour on Mauritania, matched with the nearest colour on Saudi Arabia, and how far apart the two are, the number is the worst single tile, out of 255.
- #00a95c#00543085
- #d01c1fonly on Mauritania
- #ffd700only on Mauritania
How they are put together
Nothing about how they are built was measured the same on both.
Only Mauritania: horizontal bands. Only Saudi Arabia: a single-coloured ground.
What each one carries
Mauritania carries a star and a crescent. Saudi Arabia carries writing and a sword.
How the number was arrived at
Both flags are drawn at 64×48 and cut into squares 8 across. Each square is averaged to one colour, and the score is the worst single square, so two flags that agree everywhere except one corner are as far apart as that corner, which is the right answer to a question about whether anybody could tell them apart. 0 is the same picture; the number is the worst single tile, out of 255.
On that scale Mauritania and Saudi Arabia score 93.7 out of 255, which is the 37% above.
It cannot see everything. Both flags are stretched to the same box, so Indonesia and Monaco, which differ in nothing else, are measured as their reds rather than as identical. The look-alikes page sets out the rest.
Also close
The flags the pipeline measured nearest to these two.