Can you beat this one?

Central Ideas & Details

Ports are often ranked by the tonnage they handle, but tonnage flatters an iron-ore terminal and understates a port moving small, high-value goods. Container ports are ranked instead in twenty-foot equivalent units, a count of boxes that treats a nearly empty container like one loaded to its 26-tonne limit. Counting ships is worse, because ship sizes vary by an order of magnitude, and researchers now combine weight, value, container capacity and inland transport links into a single measure.