The article states that Greenland is the largest island. This may conflict with a common belief that Australia is an island; as an Australian, allow me to explain (it’s actually quite interesting!)
Australia is a continent, so it cannot be an island by definition, as islands are defined as 1. completely surrounded by water, and 2. smaller than continents. It may seem like a silly technical objection at first, but it’s actually necessary to stipulate that continents cannot be islands, as otherwise the largest island would be the Americas, or perhaps mainland Asia + Africa + Europe.
Perhaps the other reason Australia seems like an island (while eg the Americas does not) is that it looks mostly convex on a global map. Unfortunately, we can’t make use of this intuition in a formal way because of the coastline paradox.
Australia is a continent, so it cannot be an island by definition, as islands are defined as 1. completely surrounded by water, and 2. smaller than continents. It may seem like a silly technical objection at first, but it’s actually necessary to stipulate that continents cannot be islands, as otherwise the largest island would be the Americas, or perhaps mainland Asia + Africa + Europe.
Perhaps the other reason Australia seems like an island (while eg the Americas does not) is that it looks mostly convex on a global map. Unfortunately, we can’t make use of this intuition in a formal way because of the coastline paradox.