Michael Kleber:

I have no data, but if they were weighting the country by population, not by land area, I would consider the usage reasonable.

I have an August 15 statement by UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon saying: "Nearly one out of ten Pakistanis has been directly or indirectly affected -- possibly 20 million people. One-fifth of the country is ravaged by floods." Unfortunately that's already four days after the "one-fifth" meme started. But it does suggest that, by population, only 10% of the country was "affected". As to the one-fifth, "ravaged by floods" is not the same thing as "under water". There is a second meme circulating based on the fraction "one-quarter", apparently started with the estimate of flooding having "hit" one-quarter of the country. A couple of news organizations here in Canada have stated that one- quarter of Pakistan is/remains under water!

Scott Huddleston:

I googled "satellite maps of August 2010 Pakistan floods". Many relevant hits, here's one:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10986220

Thank you for this. That map gives me a clearer understanding of how the numerical mismeasure (of how much of Pakistan is "under water") might have come about. A good analogy here would be American weather maps which give warnings by county: Even though a tornado warning (say) may affect only a tiny corner of a given county, the entire county gets flagged. (Here in Canada, where northern counties can be quite large and irregularly shaped, this occasionally makes for some inappropriate/misleading pictures of where active weather may be occurring.) The "affected districts" map of Pakistan is like that: Even though only a tiny portion of the district may actually be under water, the area of the entire district gets added to the tally. Inattention to detail in news reporting takes care of the rest.

I was way off base with this posting. I did not mean to appear insensitive to the tremendous suffering in Pakistan. I just heard on NPR from a Pakistani official that an area _the size of England_ is under water. At 11:13 AM 8/17/2010, Henry Baker wrote:

I think that the reporter held up his bottle of whiskey & it shielded his eyes from Pakistan.

Pakistan = One Fifth!

At 10:39 AM 8/17/2010, Hans Havermann wrote:

...

Approximately six days ago, news organizations began reporting that, according to the United Nations, "one-fifth" of Pakistan was under water. Since then, the one-fifth has appeared again and again with assorted modifiers: up to, about, at least, etc. Looking at the Earth Observatory pictures...

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=45200

... I am having a hard time seeing the reality behind that fraction. I've been unable to find the original UN source of the stories and I don't see a lot of skepticism out there. Perhaps by the "country" of Pakistan is meant something other than geographical shape but that is never explicitly stated. Anybody care to wade in?