Continent smallest continent. Earth's major landmasses all have coasts on a single, continuous World Ocean, which is divided into a number of principal oceanic components by the continents and various geographic criteria. The most restricted meaning of "continent" is that of a continuous area of land or mainland, with the coastline and any land boundaries forming the edge of the continent. In this sense the term "continental Europe" (sometimes referred to in Britain as "the Continent") is used to refer to mainland Europe, excluding islands such as Great Britain, Ireland, Malta and Iceland, and the term "continent of Australia" may refer
Smallest-circle problem Smallest-circle problem The smallest-circle problem or minimum covering circle problem is a mathematical problem of computing the smallest circle that contains all of a given set of points in the Euclidean plane. The corresponding problem in "n"-dimensional space, the smallest bounding-sphere problem, is to compute the smallest "n"-sphere that contains all of a given set of points. The smallest-circle problem was initially proposed by the English mathematician James Joseph Sylvester in 1857. The smallest-circle problem in the plane is an example of a facility location problem (the 1-center problem) in which the location of a new facility must be chosen