[HN Gopher] Maps distort how we see the world
___________________________________________________________________
Maps distort how we see the world
Author : yarapavan
Score : 257 points
Date : 2023-06-21 17:08 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com)
| [deleted]
| AlbertCory wrote:
| When I was in Google Maps, a popular interview question was
| "what's your favorite projection? (don't say Mercator)" I didn't
| get asked that one, fortunately.
|
| Whenever I see one of those "the Earth from space" photos, I
| always think, "Wow, Africa is _really_ big. "
| placesalt wrote:
| I agree with many other comments here that this is more an effect
| of the practical purpose that maps are created for than any
| presumed nefarious motivation. Look at the list of supported
| projections in the PROJ database - it's a very long list, and
| they're all there to solve some particular problem.
|
| Also, it's worth acknowledging that projections like the Robinson
| projection are often used now instead of Mercator on general-
| purpose wall maps.
|
| Since the topic came up, this is one of my favourite special-
| purpose global maps: a map of global ocean circulation, centred
| around Antarctica:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/c4et3x/global_ocea...
| drno123 wrote:
| Is this the same Pueyo who shaped Covid response through "the
| hammer and the dance"? People still consider this guy relevant?!?
| renewiltord wrote:
| Dude, that is wild! I mean, I know about the distortion but still
| watching Indonesia span that width is crazy. Or the bits about
| Brazil's Northernmost and Easternmost, or China's Westernmost.
|
| Great collection of illustrations.
| nntwozz wrote:
| "The map is not the territory." -- Alfred Korzybski
| slibhb wrote:
| > Countries closer to the equator--which happen to be poorer1--
| seem smaller than they are.
|
| Depends on the projection you use and its parameters. The "Web
| Mercator is racist" meme is just lazy.
|
| One way around the issue is rendering a globe on a screen. Google
| maps does this when you zoom out far enough. By the same token,
| if you're using a screen, it's possible to dynamically reproject
| a map based on whatever is centered.
| nwallin wrote:
| > The "Web Mercator is racist" meme is just lazy.
|
| It is lazy, but here's a good reason to not use Web Mercator:
| Unlike regular Mercator, Web Mercator is not conformal.
| Mercator preserves shape locally, but Web Mercator distorts
| shapes by +/- 1%-ish depending on latitude. Web Mercator
| doesn't do the thing that makes Mercator a good projection.
|
| Does that +/- 1%-ish actually matter? Maybe, I dunno. It annoys
| me though.
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| [dead]
| profsummergig wrote:
| Extremely well put-together article. Contains many examples I've
| seen in disparate sources before.
|
| I use it as an example of how data visualization can distort.
|
| I often wonder if similar things happen with tabular data, but we
| just can't "see" it so clearly.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| If you think only in Mercator (e.g.), it's easy to fall into
| erroneous concepts. A great example of this came when, years ago,
| I had a business trip from Texas where I live to Dubai.
|
| A friend asked, cleverly aware of the distance involved, if the
| flight went east or west -- because if you have Flat Map Brain,
| that's what you default to, right?
|
| The answer is "neither."
|
| The route went mostly north from Houston, crossed Canada and
| began trending south (without turning!) over / around Iceland; we
| approached Dubai from the north, more or less.
|
| I remember the flight back home going over Iran, but it was at
| least a decade ago and regional tensions may have made them
| change that. This site
|
| https://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAE211
|
| shows them avoiding Iranian airspace now, but the flight path
| seems otherwise about the same.
| netsharc wrote:
| This site shows the shortest path between 2 airports:
| http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=IAH-DXB
|
| I'd imagine your flight would've avoided Russia, afaik even
| before the war they were obnoxious about who can fly over
| them/how much it would cost:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdNDYBt9e_U
| ubermonkey wrote:
| I've no recollection about flying in Russian airspace, but I
| definitely did snap a phonecam pic of the seatback map
| showing us flying between the Elburz mountains and Tehran.
| This was in 2012, so 11 years ago (per the date of the pic I
| found).
|
| The path suggested by that position absolutely implies flight
| over Russian territory, but obviously I have no data beyond
| that. It seems unlikely that an airliner would, like, zigzag
| around; n.b. that I was on Emirates, not a US carrier, and
| Russia (and other countries) probably doesn't treat them like
| they would an airline run out of a NATO country.
|
| Or, at least, probably didn't in 2012. No idea what the rules
| are now.
|
| EDIT: I found this article which notes that, at least as of a
| year ago, Emirates was flying TO Russia, so presumably
| flights through Russian airspace en route to other places
| were okay as well before the war.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-
| defense/emirates-...
| cubefox wrote:
| With the advent of the paperless office, the increasing ubiquity
| of screens, and the steady progress in 3D rendering performance -
| there will soon be little need for 2D map projections. We just
| render the Earth as a sphere and do some perspective projection.
| asylteltine wrote:
| [dead]
| interroboink wrote:
| I have a poster of a South-up map[1], which is fun to look at and
| wiggle those expectations in my mind from time to time.
|
| Hobo-Dyer[2] is also an interesting projection.
|
| [1] https://www.mapsinternational.com/upside-down-political-
| worl... (just an example; you can find others)
|
| [2] https://digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/ss:19343348
| idatum wrote:
| Makes me wonder why South isn't intuitively "up" for folks in
| the Southern Hemisphere.
| efsavage wrote:
| A good collection, I especially like the Mediterranean-in-
| Australia one.
|
| Responding to the title itself, if you think "Maps Distort How We
| See the World" you should see what not having a map does!
| randcraw wrote:
| There was a memorable scene from "The West Wing" on the biases
| imposed by most map projections, in particular, how Mercator
| makes North America look huge:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLqC3FNNOaI
| js2 wrote:
| Probably seen that clip a dozen times and this was the first
| time I noticed Whitford manspreading in the middle of the clip
| and Janney batting his leg back. By the look on his face, it
| seems improvised to get a laugh out of her.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| it's a huge stretch to claim there was no bias involved. the
| biais is in putting europe front and center and at the top.
| Have you seen maps that place the americas in the center? How
| about maps with north and south swapped?
| prepend wrote:
| Maybe more accurate is that there wasn't some nefarious
| bias that was meant to oppress people.
|
| Europe was at the center because they made the maps. It's a
| simple reason. If some other culture has been dominant we'd
| be using a projection that makes it more useful for them.
| yunohn wrote:
| The vast majority of items are manufactured in Asia now,
| especially globes. By your logic, should they
| unilaterally start printing Asia in the center?
| heikkilevanto wrote:
| Globes?? They do not suffer (much?) from the map
| projection problem. And no, they should not be printing
| any part of the world in the center of the globe!
| prepend wrote:
| This isn't my logic, it's the logic of the map designers.
|
| It's not important where they are made. It's important
| where they are designed.
|
| I expect there's lots of maps with Asia in the center,
| but I don't expect people in the US to buy them.
| NoRelToEmber wrote:
| Unilaterally? If they want to use maps that center Asia
| in their education and work, who is stopping them? In
| fact I'd wager they start their education by learning
| about the geography of Asia first.
|
| I'm puzzled by this demonization of simply observing the
| world from the perspective of one's own culture. Blaming
| Europeans for putting Europe in the center of their maps
| is like blaming Italians for teaching Italian in school,
| and not some globally-representative language (maybe
| English or Chinese) chosen without local "bias".
|
| Though your mention of "especially globes" has me
| wondering how they would place Asia in the center of a
| globe...
| [deleted]
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Almost no one lives in the south so they are never swapped.
| NoRelToEmber wrote:
| It's fascinating how we're expected to believe senior White
| House officials are such perfect strawman doofuses that they
| have never seen a globe or the Mollweide projection, or were
| ever reprimanded by a geography teacher for saying "up" instead
| of "North". The only thing that scene is missing is for her to
| fall over in shock and disbelief at hearing that the Earth is
| round.
|
| They're not characters, they're tools to push a message.
| codingdave wrote:
| It is fiction. Relax and enjoy the show.
| NoRelToEmber wrote:
| The only way I could enjoy that farce is after multiple,
| life-alteringly serious concussions.
| varenc wrote:
| The video quality of that clip was so bad I uploaded a new
| 1080p version to YouTube: https://youtu.be/dxhWybPCEpI
|
| If you want to avoid YouTube, here's just the video:
| https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/szn691fdcgvxwh8/map_proj...
|
| edit: updated YouTube link to include the full version
| izzydata wrote:
| It ends too soon. The funniest part is when they talk about
| the northern hemisphere being on top and then them putting it
| on the bottom and her saying it is freaking her out.
| varenc wrote:
| Doh! Thanks for the spot. The 2nd part is actually from a
| different scene, but I combined them both and updated the
| links above.
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| Except Mercator wasn't German.
|
| He was born in the County of Flanders, current day East
| Flanders and moved to Germany at the age of 40.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerardus_Mercator
| ralusek wrote:
| This clip is always hilarious to me. Smugly declares "it's
| where you've been living this whole time," as he stands in
| front of a projection that is just as flawed, as all
| projections are, as the Mercator. The only priority of that map
| projection is attempting to account for the accurate area of
| landmasses, sacrificing correct shape of landmasses, as well as
| a ton of navigational utility.
|
| A globe is the only correct projection, and I have personally
| never looked at a globe and thought "Wow, I've been deceived!"
| Google maps now even switches to trying to do a globe
| projection when you zoom out far enough.
|
| This is a ridiculous issue for smug people to bring up at
| parties.
| trhfhxggf wrote:
| It makes things further from the equator appear huge. There's
| no conspiracy or biases involved, unless of course you're
| proposing that the Mercator projection was developed to give
| Antarctica a false sense of superiority.
| chippiewill wrote:
| Andrew Jackson, in the main foyer of the White House, had a
| two-ton block of cheese. It was there, for any and all who were
| hungry, it was there for the voiceless.
| sublinear wrote:
| So... government cheese?
| [deleted]
| luxurytent wrote:
| The overlay of Canada on Europe is always a fun one. We moan so
| much here (perhaps rightfully so) about lack of public transit
| and reasonable infrastructure to get around, but we're also
| comparing a population of (just recently hit!) 40,000 and
| ~700,000. Orders of magnitude larger, but roughly same land area.
|
| This is why I am hugely in support of increased immigration into
| Canada, housing crisis aside (it'll resolve over time)
| mhb wrote:
| > This is why I am hugely in support of increased immigration
| into Canada
|
| I suspect the US has a few states that are willing to help.
| jtakkala wrote:
| The size of Canada really isn't a valid excuse for Canada's
| poor public transit, nor is Canada's population.
|
| Notjustbikes posted a good video rebutting this argument a few
| days ago: https://youtu.be/REni8Oi1QJQ
| lm28469 wrote:
| Look at this map, it tells another story:
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FjeXxfbXkAg30EZ.png
| MalcolmDwyer wrote:
| 90% of Canadians live in a "small" strip of land that is
| comparable in size to Europe. That area (along with several
| regions and city pairs in the US) could have excellent inter-
| city and intra-city transit. But we just don't.
|
| Canada and the US are lacking in good public transit because as
| a society we've made the choice to build for cars and not build
| for people. Almost everything about our built environment is
| optimized for cars and the _result_ is sprawl. The cause is our
| public policies, building regulations, and zoning.
|
| It has nothing to do with the size of the country, because
| people don't try to commute across the country, just like
| people who live in Paris generally don't commute to Berlin
| every day. The vast majority of travel is local and
| occasionally regional.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > housing crisis aside (it'll resolve over time)
|
| And fuck all the suffering along the way? Honestly Canada needs
| to address that before it can even begin to start thinking
| about more immigration. Canada is not even vaguely equipped to
| handle more people as it stands now.
| NoRelToEmber wrote:
| > Orders of magnitude larger, but roughly same land area.
|
| You should compare the populated area, not the entire landmass.
| That there exist vast unpopulated frozen tundras nominally
| within Canadian borders does not hinder public transport any
| more than Siberia hindered building the Moscow metro.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| Seriously. Half the population is in southern Ontario.
| There's no reason we can't have a serious high speed rail
| line Toronto<->Quebec City that would serve - without
| exaggeration - most Canadians.
|
| I forget where I read this phrase first, but: every flight in
| this corridor is a policy failure.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> We moan so much here (perhaps rightfully so) about lack of
| public transit and reasonable infrastructure to get around_
|
| Funny thing is that Canada _used_ to have that public transit
| infrastructure, from big cities even into tiny little towns.
| The country was built on it!
|
| We eventually ripped it up because it turns out people liked
| driving cars more. And I posit that they still do. If the will
| was there, it could be rebuilt, but it turns out moaning is a
| lot easier.
| meindnoch wrote:
| Yeah, it must be the Mercator projection why the global south is
| poor.
|
| Never mind New Zealand and Australia...
|
| Never mind that the whole post-USSR Asia is on the same level as
| some African countries...
|
| It must be those damn maps.
| crtified wrote:
| All maps are created with selective purpose.
|
| The only thing that can possibly represent all purposes
| simultaneously is the world itself.
|
| Accordingly, every map is also a compromise.
| meitham wrote:
| The true size is excellent way to views these and is a major
| source for this article https://www.thetruesize.com/
| ximus wrote:
| Fun article. Surprised it doesn't mention the Peters projection
| map.
|
| You cannot have both area fidelity and shape fidelity to
| represent countries on a map.
|
| If you want area fidelity, the Gall-Peters [1] projection and the
| Peters world map [2] (1952) by Arno Peters are the way to
| visualize countries, whereas common maps focus on shape-fidelity.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arno_Peters?useskin=vector [2]
| https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/map-of-the-world-peters-p...
| gjm11 wrote:
| There are plenty of other equal-area map projections. Several
| of them are less shape-distorting than the Peters projection.
| See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-area_projection.
| Peters did a great job of publicity, as witness the common but
| _completely false_ idea that the Peters projection is "the
| way" to make an equal-area plane map, but there's nothing
| particularly great about the projection itself.
| TiredGuy wrote:
| The gif at the top was very interesting. The shrinking of the
| North America and Russia were really surprising to me, as I had
| always looked at them as much more significant land masses.
|
| A little off-topic from projections, but I just returned from a
| trip to Seoul a few days ago, and I found a simplified subway map
| to be so much easier to use than Google Maps' more realistic-but-
| less-relevant map. Subway map design has always intrigued me in
| that it ignores so much in terms of position and proportion, but
| at the same time can relay the needed information so much more
| clearly.
| kibwen wrote:
| Preserving the relative proportions of the continents while also
| emphasizing how the continents nearly form one giant
| supercontinent is why I prefer the Dymaxion projection:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map
|
| It works by projecting the earth onto an icosahedron (a D20) and
| then unfolding it. Distortion is fairly low and roughly equal
| across all the continents; here's a graphic that demonstrates the
| relative distortion:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map#/media/File:Dymax...
|
| Honorable mention to the Peirce quincuncial projection, which
| both tiles the plane and also cleverly arranges the continents to
| concentrate distortion into the oceans, as an alternative
| aesthetic projection:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peirce_quincuncial_projection
| zokier wrote:
| Of discontinuous projections, I prefer Waterman over Dymaxion,
| it feels more regular and is more intuitive to see how it wraps
| around a sphere (or geoid). While Waterman might have more
| distortion in some absolute sense, the regularity of the
| distortions makes it still more pleasing (subjective, I know).
| One weird thing about Dymaxion is how the 70deg parallels
| around both north and south poles are distinctly lumpy.
|
| But really the biggest problem I have with Dymaxion (and with
| all discontinuous maps to some degree) is how difficult it is
| to grasp how the different landmasses are located in relation
| to each other across the discontinuations; the worst-case
| example is probably estimating the path from South-America to
| Australia or Africa which requires some degree of mental
| gymnastics to accomplish.
| thanatos519 wrote:
| I printed the Dymaxion SVG on A3+ card paper. Makes a great
| icosahedron!
| simonbw wrote:
| I see that you like Isaac Asimov, XML, and shoes with toes.
|
| https://xkcd.com/977/
| kibwen wrote:
| XML gets a bad rap, and I agree that efforts to crowbar it
| into being a data interchange format were ill-advised
| relative to just making it a good text-based markup language,
| but it had plenty of good ideas, and it took decades for data
| interchange via JSON to reinvent things like schemas and
| XPath that XML had from the start!
| drewcoo wrote:
| Dymaxion map: one island, one ocean.
| HPsquared wrote:
| https://earth.nullschool.net has a range of different projections
| available (on top of the main functionality of the site, which is
| itself a pretty cool map of wind/weather/atmospheric patterns).
|
| The cool thing is that you can pan the map in the different
| projections, which isn't possible with most maps: most tend to be
| static images.
| grogenaut wrote:
| Pretty cool to think about the amount of work going on behind
| the covers to alter these projections on the fly. And how
| costly it was to build them originally by hand.
| tony_cannistra wrote:
| work, sure, but not _that_ much. It's affine transformations
| / some fast linear algebra, for the most part. Your second
| point is for sure true, though.
| HPsquared wrote:
| I wonder if anyone ever came up with an elaborate mechanism
| connected to a pen.
| omoikane wrote:
| Obligatory xkcd, with on-topic alt-text: https://xkcd.com/977/
|
| For a more distorted way to see the world, try:
| http://andersk.mit.edu/euler-spiral-projection/
| jezzamon wrote:
| It's actually less distorted in some ways :)
| shagie wrote:
| I'm fond of the Dymaxion (and either the land connected or the
| ocean connected forms - as applicable) because it has some neat
| applications showing migratory routes.
|
| My parents have a map of bird migrations and there are some
| birds that have migratory routes that feel "disjoint" when
| looking at other projections.
|
| Another example is World map of prehistoric human migrations
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_map_of_prehist...
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| My current favourite alternative projection is Spilhaus, eg
| https://porteconomicsmanagement.org/wp-content/uploads/Map-P...
| Jun8 wrote:
| Interesting post with eye opening stats (even after reading many
| posts like this I'm still amazed at how big Brazil is!)
|
| Another interesting effect maps have on worldview that was not
| mentioned is the placement of North at the top
| (https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/7960/why-
| is...). The fact that in the South of Egypt was referred to as
| "Upper Egypt" has confused me to no end, since "clearly" it's the
| bottom part (roughly corresponding to middle part of the current
| country). This is an interesting example where an important
| geological feature trumps the maps.
|
| See these interesting answers to get more information about the
| terms Upper/Lower Egypt:
| https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/47165/did-egypti...
| idlewords wrote:
| There's a similar phenomenon of terminology creep with language
| terms like 'High German' and 'Low German'. This nomenclature
| has been adopted into fantasy literature to suggest a more
| noble vs. fallen version of some ancient dialect, but all it
| meant originally is that 'high' speakers were upstream (and
| therefore uphill) from the 'low' speakers.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Upper/lower is not weird, if you're used to a country with deep
| vallies (upper part of valley, lower part of valley, follows
| the river naming exactly, of course).
| Someone wrote:
| > This is an interesting example where an important geological
| feature trumps the maps.
|
| I'm not convinced. Historically, Arabic and Egyptian maps had
| south on the top (https://muslimheritage.com/maps/)
| philshem wrote:
| I received a gift from a friend in Uruguay that is from the
| clockmaker Girosur. The clock runs backwards, rhetorically
| asking "why is North up?"
|
| https://girosur.com/como-funcionan/
| fsckboy wrote:
| one look at that clock and I'm rhetorically convinced, it
| does no good to reverse things, let's rotate that clockwise
| and keep north up!
| jeromegv wrote:
| There was Upper Canada vs Lower Canada. On a map, they were
| inverted, but it was in reference to the St-Lawrence river and
| water from the Great Lake. You would first arrive in Lower
| Canada (from Europe) and keep navigating to reach Upper Canada.
| jgeada wrote:
| Every flat map projection distorts something, so every projection
| has to optimize some parameter and trade off other utility. I'm
| constantly amazed at how hung up people are on apparent size of
| countries. If size is your thing, use some other projection!
|
| Mercator is and remains popular because it preserves local angles
| and shapes, which makes it simple use this projection to navigate
| by rhumb lines (compass headings). Because most maps people are
| exposed to are designed for navigation, it is the most commonly
| seen projection. And yes, it distorts size and is largely
| unusable past about +- 70o latitude. Every map is a compromise.
| bluepod4 wrote:
| > I'm constantly amazed at how hung up people are on apparent
| size of countries. If size is your thing, use some other
| projection!
|
| Hmm. That's not usually how the discourse goes.
|
| It's never "wow, Country X is actually smaller than Country Y.
| That's terrible."
|
| It usually goes something like "wow, Country X is actually
| smaller than Country Y. This distorts our worldview and makes
| us think things we shouldn't have thought. That's terrible."
|
| FWIW, I was amazed in school when I saw a more accurate
| projection of the size of Europe. I mean, I _knew_ that it was
| tiny. But my thoughts about Europe definitely changed after
| seeing the other projection.
|
| Similarly but not size-related, I was amazed to learn that some
| countries place Asia in the center (and the social/cultural
| implications of this).
|
| I think you should be more amazed at people who _don't_ care at
| _all _ about size. Sure, this group might include reasonable
| people like yourself who are knowledgeable about map
| distortions and trade offs. But a lot of the "I don't care"
| group overlaps with the "Africa is a country" group. (Map size
| "memes" appear on Quora often and the degenerates come out of
| the woodworks to complain.)
| lm28469 wrote:
| > But my thoughts about Europe definitely changed after
| seeing the other projection.
|
| Can you elaborate on that ?
|
| Did you think bigger = better ?
| prepend wrote:
| > But my thoughts about Europe definitely changed after
| seeing the other projection.
|
| That's odd. Did you think land mass was somehow really
| important?
|
| Did you ever check out how small Britain or Spain or Portugal
| or Netherlands were to the size of their empire.
|
| Do you now think that Indonesia is more important because of
| its size?
|
| I would expect that revelations about population would be
| more worldview adjusting (Nigeria and Indonesia are so huge).
| bluepod4 wrote:
| You have a fixed and narrow definition of what important
| means.
|
| Importance should change depending on context.
|
| Sure, you are definitely allowed to say that a certain
| metric (i.e. population size or density) has more practical
| applications and provides better signal for "blah blah".
|
| But I'm not discussing "blah blah".
| trhfhxggf wrote:
| > It usually goes something like "wow, Country X is actually
| smaller than Country Y. This distorts our worldview and makes
| us think things we shouldn't have thought. That's terrible."
|
| That's not less stupid than the other statement. It's like
| looking at your shadow at sunset and thinking, "Wow, I never
| realized I was 20 feet tall."
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| > It's like looking at your shadow at sunset and thinking,
| "Wow, I never realized I was 20 feet tall."
|
| Quite the opposite, no? It's like spending your whole life
| looking at only your evening shadow (Hello, Plato) and then
| seeing yourself in a good mirror and realising your actual
| height relative to the world around you for the first time.
| bluepod4 wrote:
| Exactly.
| [deleted]
| samtho wrote:
| I doubt people are actively giving less value or worth to
| places that appear smaller on the map. Additionally, the
| majority of people just don't have a concrete frame of
| reference of distances beyond how far we can see. As such, the
| only real exposure to vast distances at the scale of continents
| is going to be via maps, unless you have the privilege of being
| in LEO. It's pretty rare that flat projection is useful for
| anything except trivial, surface information paired with the
| sort of infantilizing teaching that prompts students into
| pointing to their home country. If this is your only exposure
| to the world, it's easy to see how you will begin to assign
| some value at a subconscious level. Any indirect representation
| of something larger is going to be a compromise based on the
| needs of the application, but we can do better than the flat
| projection just from a UX level.
| garbagecoder wrote:
| Also 80% of the population lives in the northern hemisphere.
| It's not an evil scheme to cheat the 20% who live down there.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| > Every flat map projection distorts something, so every
| projection has to optimize some parameter and trade off other
| utility. I'm constantly amazed at how hung up people are on
| apparent size of countries. If size is your thing, use some
| other projection!
|
| That's the point of the post. The trade-offs between different
| projections are rarely discussed, considered or even mentioned
| outside very small cohorts because there is a specific shape of
| the world map that most people who are not map-heads or
| spherical projection experts take for guaranteed. Get a non-
| Mercator projection map and put it in your dinner room, and
| then see how many of your guests will comment about "so.. why
| is this map weird? It doesn't look right?" then tell them
| "every flat map projection distorts [...]"
|
| > Mercator is and remains popular because it preserves local
| angles and shapes, which makes it simple use this projection to
| navigate by rhumb lines (compass headings). Because most maps
| people are exposed to are designed for navigation, it is the
| most commonly seen projection. And yes, it distorts size and is
| largely unusable past about +- 70o latitude. Every map is a
| compromise.
|
| Out of the millions of decorative world maps on walls, kids
| with maps to learn the world, world maps on the news, maps used
| in data visualization charts etc., non of those are using the
| map for "navigation" yet they still use Mercator projection
| simply because "that's the right shape of the world" regardless
| of what "right" means. Not because they evaluated the
| compromises of the different projections and figures "oh maybe
| someone will be lost at sea and only have access to our GDP per
| capita world map visualization, better use Mercator projection
| to preserve local angles and line up with compass headings"
| gsich wrote:
| I think most people know what a globe is. And that a globe is
| not a 2D map, even though they might not be able to
| articulate that.
| the_af wrote:
| > _Get a non-Mercator projection map and put it in your
| dinner room, and then see how many of your guests will
| comment about "so.. why is this map weird? It doesn't look
| right?" then tell them "every flat map projection distorts
| [...]"_
|
| This is actually a pretty cool conversation topic during
| dinner. I would take the opportunity to show off. It doesn't
| have to be a downside. "Hey, did you know that [interesting
| stuff]...?".
|
| If your guests are the kind of people who get irritated
| instead of awed by cool explanations about the world, I admit
| _then_ you have a problem.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| yeah, I think it would be an interesting discussion topic.
| Especially if you could show the 6th figure from that post
| (the one showing the 7,500km distortion). It just depends
| on how you put it. OPs remarks were condescending as if the
| only reason to bring this up is "because of size hang ups"
| as oppose to "bring this up to question your own basic
| wrong assumptions about the world"
|
| It's far from common knowledge or a well known fact that
| the only reason the World Map looks the way it looks is
| just an arbitrary projection type that's picked for equally
| arbitrary reasons. Because as I mentioned, compass
| navigation is hardly the only map use-case. It may have
| originally started that way in the 1,200s or whatever, but
| today we use maps for all sorts of visualizations and other
| things. And the assumption that "Mercator projection" is
| the "right" shape of the world is held by most not because
| they have "size hang ups" but because it's just the way it
| is. Just like any assumption you hold that you never
| question because there is no reason to question it really.
| thrashh wrote:
| People have a problem with this post and these kind of posts
| because they imply it was deliberately done for evil reasons.
|
| The point of any article isn't just its factual content; it's
| the hidden message from the way it's said. I don't know if
| you intended to say it the way you did when you started off
| with the comment about poverty in the first two sentences,
| but by doing so, you set the tone for the rest of your
| article. (You also didn't expand on that tidbit so it kind of
| leaves your audience wondering why you mentioned it.)
|
| I like the rest of the article though.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Probably eddythompson80 is not Tomas Pueyo.
|
| The comment about poverty was compatible with believing it
| was deliberate and evil, careless, or excusable but
| unfortunate.
| prepend wrote:
| > That's the point of the post.
|
| I lost it in the post. Whenever I hear the "crisis" part
| presented without the perfectly rational explanation I get
| frustrated and spend more time trying to figure out if this
| is a problem.
|
| Saying "maps distort the way we see the world" is a problem
| unless you immediately follow it with "and that's ok
| because..."
|
| Otherwise we waste time on stuff like "eyeballs distort the
| way we see the world" when it's true but not an issue at all.
|
| Especially since the first paragraph mentions how countries
| closer to the equator tend to be poorer. As if that's somehow
| relevant.
| thfuran wrote:
| I don't understand what you're saying. The article doesn't
| present this as a crisis. It doesn't really make sense to
| say it's okay or not okay, except insofar as anything that
| isn't an existential threat is okay, I suppose.
| the_af wrote:
| The poor countries claim has a footnote and a promise to
| explore it in another article. It doesn't say anything
| further about this.
|
| The article also doesn't answer whether the distortions are
| intentional, a side-effect, a trade-off, or a combination
| of some of this. The author promises a follow-up article,
| unfortunately a "premium" one which I suppose you must pay
| for (edit: sadly, it's paywalled:
| https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/are-maps-
| decei...)
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Map projection trade-offs are discussed a lot. I studied it
| at school, I can't count the number of "do you realize how
| big country X compared to country Y" articles, (the one
| linked here is a good one btw) and it often pops up in trivia
| questions. Everyone has seen a globe, and non-Mercator maps
| are everywhere. Famously on National Geographics.
|
| Also, using a (truncated) Mercator projection for a GDP per
| capita map (or any political map that isn't about land mass)
| is not a bad idea as its most notorious flaw becomes an
| advantage because coincidently, it tends to enlarge small
| countries and shrink large countries, which makes for a more
| readable map.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > it tends to enlarge small countries and shrink large
| countries, which makes for a more readable map.
|
| It enlarges the two biggest countries in the World (Russian
| and Canada) while shrinking central American and central
| African countries that aren't particularly big to say the
| least...
| ecshafer wrote:
| The problem with these kind of posts is that they also ignore
| the existence of globes. No one should be surprised by the
| "size" of any country because globes already exist which are
| a pretty close to true representation.
| [deleted]
| JackFr wrote:
| > The trade-offs between different projections are rarely
| discussed, considered or even mentioned outside very small
| cohorts
|
| Not true. They're honestly discussed all the time to the
| point of becoming tiresome.
| snoman wrote:
| Right? Is there a person above 25 that hasn't seen the
| episode (or clip) from The West Wing about map projections
| at this point?
| [deleted]
| resolutebat wrote:
| I'd like to think you're being ironic here, but I suspect
| you're not, so no: the vast majority of the world is
| outside the US and has not, in fact, seen an obscure
| episode of a TV drama about American politics.
|
| For others who haven't, here it is: https://youtu.be/vVX-
| PrBRtTY
|
| Although the projection it proclaims as superior, Gall-
| Peters, has grievous flaws of its own.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall%E2%80%93Peters_project
| ion
| zokier wrote:
| > Out of the millions of decorative world maps on walls, kids
| with maps to learn the world, world maps on the news, maps
| used in data visualization charts etc., non of those are
| using the map for "navigation" yet they still use Mercator
| projection simply because "that's the right shape of the
| world" regardless of what "right" means
|
| I question what percentage of those maps in reality are
| actually Mercator? I feel this is one of those strawman memes
| that mercator is everywhere, when in practice it feels
| relatively rare to actually encounter it.
| m2fkxy wrote:
| Agree. Most of the general-public wall maps I see out there
| use equal-area projs.
| zztop44 wrote:
| Really? In my entire lifetime I've seen maybe five?
| Including the one hanging up in my childhood home. Even
| Google Maps uses Mercator by default.
| poulpy123 wrote:
| And also Mercator remains popular because everyone is used to
| it and nobody actually cares that Greenland isn't really half
| the size of africa
| graypegg wrote:
| Exactly! This article mostly avoids it but the usual popsci
| refrain of "the map you know is WRONG" is a pet peeve of mine!
| It's not like one projection is any worse than another, as long
| as they are useful for the context it's designed for. Maps are
| diagrams!
| tony_cannistra wrote:
| and all maps are WRONG
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| One of my favorite talks by Carl Sagan talks about the geocentric
| conceit, and how one manifestation of that is how most
| civilizations tend to put themselves at the center of the map.
|
| There are certainly some good reasons to put yourself there. Most
| planning for your civilization that calls for a map is going to
| use "home" as a starting point and you'll go "out" from there.
|
| But it's still a fun observation.
|
| I liked the talk so much I set it to music and listen to it at
| the gym:
|
| https://mindpop.blankenship.io/index.html
| [deleted]
| retrac wrote:
| That reminds me of this contemporary Chinese world map:
| https://priorprobability.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/img_536...
|
| It's meant for shipping lanes, mostly. So it puts China in the
| centre. The shortest route to European and American markets are
| approximately straight lines. And the Panama canal is at the
| edge of the world.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| I saw a Japanese map recently and it took me a full minute to
| understand what I was looking at. Japan was at the center,
| and North America was on the right.
| yorwba wrote:
| If you look closely, it's actually putting the Maldives in
| the center. And the description in the bottom right doesn't
| mention shipping lanes at all (which anyways would go
| overland if you were to simply draw straight lines on this
| map) but instead mentions that a latitudinally equal-
| differential polyconic projection
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latitudinally_equal-
| differenti... is used to prevent the distortion near the
| poles that appears in commonly-used maps.
| [deleted]
| thanatos519 wrote:
| That's why I put this map on my kid's wall:
| https://www.natgeomaps.com/re-world-classic-pacific-centered
|
| We live in Europe where the default map is Atlantic-centric so
| I wanted to make sure he got a different perspective.
| bazoom42 wrote:
| Give him a globe! I remember playing with a globe as kid and
| trying to position it so I could see only water. But that is
| just one option.
| jlawson wrote:
| The 'geocentric conceit' thing is just a moralized
| overinterpretation of people trying to be practical.
|
| Obviously if you're traveling out from and back to one place
| over and over, the most sensible thing to do is to put that
| place near map center. It makes it easy to see all the other
| places in relation to your home, because how they relate to
| your home is what's relevant to you. Those are the distances
| and routes you want to be the most clear. When taking a sphere
| and mapping it to a rectangle there is no way to not do this -
| somewhere has to be the middle so you might as well choose
| somewhere practical.
|
| Sagan like many others often sells morality porn - the feeling
| of "I know better than those ignorant less moral ones". A lot
| of entertainment is like this these days.
| Kye wrote:
| He doesn't often do anything. He died in 1996. I've read a
| few of his books and I don't get this impression at all.
| bazoom42 wrote:
| The geocentric model does not put humans in the center though.
|
| At best you could argue it puts humans relatively close to the
| center, but the geocentric model also operates with a smaller
| solar system.
|
| And the implied "closer to the center is better" is not
| justified. E.g. Dante literally puts the devil in the middle of
| the universe.
| Fauntleroy wrote:
| This is why I'm glad Google maps is available in a 3d globe! Even
| at relatively close zoom levels the subtle differences in scale
| are really noticeable.
|
| Unfortunately I'm not entirely sure how to get Google Maps to
| _always_ start up in the 3d sphere mode. Half the time in firefox
| it just reverts back to a flat map.
| netsharc wrote:
| It'd be pretty cool if they can show the map in the Mercator
| projection with a center the user can choose, as well as which
| way is up...
| stephenboyd wrote:
| It isn't just the projections that distort our perception. North
| being up and south being down is so ubiquitous that it seems like
| Earth (and the Solar System) has a top side and a bottom side.
| But that's just a convention.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160614-maps-have-north-...
| trhfhxggf wrote:
| Well, if you define up and down as the axis perpendicular to
| the ecliptic, there is an up and down in the solar system.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| Kinda? It's still arbitrary which one we think of as "up" and
| which we think of as "down," though, right?
| thriftwy wrote:
| Fun thing is that USSR (and Russia as its descendant) was
| actually never using Mercator anywhere near education, since the
| distortion was too great in places where it was important. You
| would imagine it would be good for ego, but pragmatic reasons
| prevailed.
|
| Indeed, Russian textbooks would rather use Gauss-Krueger with its
| backgammon board appearance than Mercator. I believe that
| variations of Kavrayskiy VII projection were very common.
|
| On the other hand they used projections which skip displaying
| Pacific ocean entirely, because who needs _that_?
| dahwolf wrote:
| I'm from the Netherlands and just saw our tiny land shrink even
| further. Although I suppose it's a stretch to call this swampy
| river delta actual land.
|
| Anyway, I've personally experienced the shock of the true size of
| Africa. Younger me only had a few flights to Spain under my belt
| and then went on an adventurous trip to South Africa. I figured
| it would just be a few hours more. How wrong I was.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| I remember one particular trip I had on LSD. I spent some of the
| time inspecting my childhood neighbourhood in Belfast on Google
| Maps with the 3D view, and looking at it from angles other than
| North -> Top.
|
| It completely changed not only how I viewed the geography of the
| city but also the socio-political history of it. I would
| definitely recommend anyone to do the same, or with other areas
| they're familiar with, with LSD or not. It's fascincating to
| realise how much the map has shaped your view of the places you
| know.
| bit_flipper wrote:
| This article doesn't touch on the actual reasons why Mercator is
| still in widespread use:
|
| * It was the first widespread projection because of its practical
| use for nautical navigation (where it is still the best
| projection available), so it was easy for map makers to sell for
| non-nautical uses, even after "better" projections became
| available. And inertia is a hard thing to overcome for something
| considered somewhat inconsequential.
|
| * Mercator and its cousin Web Mercator are extremely simple and
| fast to calculate relative to other projections. Compare the
| formula for Web Mercator
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Mercator_projection#Formul...)
| to Equal Earth, an excellent compromise projection for general
| use (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Earth_projection#Formula
| ...). Web Mercator is very easy to generate and serve tiled maps
| out of, Equal Earth and the like require somewhat non-trivial
| engineering to make serving those maps at scale to users in a web
| browser economical and quick.
|
| * Preserving angles is legitimately important still for large
| scale (very zoomed in) road maps. Projections which preserve size
| can cause things like 90 degree road intersections to render at
| very strange angles which confuses drivers. Mercator and Web
| Mercator are therefore excellent choices of projection for local
| road navigation, which is by far the most common use of maps
| today for most people.
|
| I strongly recommend folks interested in map projections to read
| this from Mapbox: https://www.mapbox.com/blog/adaptive-
| projections. Google Maps now has similar features, but both
| companies relied on Mercator for many years with good reasons
| before technology caught up and better solutions became
| available.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _Maps distort how we see the world_
|
| maps give us our only ability to see "the world". Can you imagine
| what you would think the world looked like as our ancestors did
| in the world before accurate maps? you think the mercator
| projection is problematic, I got news for you.
| waiseristy wrote:
| Had this same thought. Our own eyeballs distort how we see the
| world.
| aio2 wrote:
| I'm not doing the math, but assuming it's correct, that's really
| impressive. It's all on perspective!
| walnutclosefarm wrote:
| Probably 99% of the time I look at, or use, a map, it's at a
| scale where the Mercator projection is entirely fair, and highly
| useful. For probably half of the uses I have for maps, whatever
| distortion relative to an actual globe it introduces isn't even
| noticable. Then there are the rare times I look at a map at
| something approaching hemispheric scale. But come on, people,
| I've been told since 4th grade about the distortions of a world
| map at that scale. I literally can remember Ms. Kraft in 4th
| grade explaining how the map made Greenland look nearly as big as
| Africa, when in fact it was more like the size the larger
| countries in Africa.
|
| And, anyone who has traveled internationally much at all is well
| aware that, say, Europe is a hell of a lot smaller than it looks
| on a world map - because we fly, for the most part, great circle
| routes, and flight times give you a very good measure of how far
| things are. First time you look at a flight to Sydney, the size
| of the Pacific Ocean, relative to the North Atlantic, pretty much
| hits you over the head.
|
| So, while I find articles like this kinda fun for a couple of
| minutes (what strange comparison will this author pull out of
| their hat to make the point that flat maps distort world
| persectives?), it's mostly for entertainment value. There really
| isn't much to see.
| ukmac wrote:
| Wow. Mind blown
| cryptoegorophy wrote:
| Every kid should have a globe to understand countries and
| distortion better.
| Animats wrote:
| They all do.[1]
|
| [1] https://earth.google.com/
| interroboink wrote:
| Aside from the humor of that page failing to load for me
| (Firefox), I also smirk at the fact that it would still be
| projecting the globe onto a _flat_ screen to view it (:
|
| Something different about having an actual ball in your
| hands.
| capitainenemo wrote:
| Hm. Page loads fine for me in Firefox. Has for years
| (unlike google maps itself where oddly I get blocked for
| their 3d mode, even when that same mode works fine on
| earth.google.com)
|
| If you're on Linux, maybe check your drivers, or do
| webgl.force-enabled layers.acceleration.force-enabled ?
| jefftk wrote:
| _> that page failing to load for me (Firefox)_
|
| Weird; testing on a Mac with Firefox it loads fine.
|
| Anything interesting in the console?
| interroboink wrote:
| I tried again in a 'blank' profile, and it worked there.
|
| On the failing one, I see some HTTP/3 400 results from
| "earth-pa.clients6.google.com" before it goes into an
| infinite-spinner state. On the working profile, those
| requests succeed. Turned off uBlock and such, still no
| dice. Maybe some weird thing relating to having a logged-
| in gmail account on that profile? No idea, really.
|
| But clearly not OS/driver related, since it works in the
| other profile.
| capitainenemo wrote:
| Are you using "resist fingerprinting" in Firefox? I've
| noticed that causes mystery total blocks or additional
| "click and hold to show you are not a bot" challenges on
| many sites (Fedex, Kickstarter, Walmart, Lowes) and at
| random. Often it seems in some backend XHR that the app
| writer didn't think to handle bot blocks on, so the page
| half loads.
| interroboink wrote:
| Just the defaults, with regard to that; so I think not? I
| see in about:config:
| "privacy.resistFingerprinting=false".
|
| Same on the other profile.
|
| Good to know about, though (:
| earthboundkid wrote:
| This is dumb. Every elementary school classroom has a globe. We
| see how big the countries are on globes routinely.
| Freebytes wrote:
| Students rarely even look at a globe, though. They see many
| more maps online.
| midasuni wrote:
| Especially the southern hemisphere, as their head is normally
| above the globe
| TehShrike wrote:
| I bought a couple globes in the last year and am glad I did.
|
| I bought this small one for my desk (16$):
| https://www.waypointgeographic.com/p/gyroglobe-antique - every so
| often I rotate it slightly so that I'm staring at a different
| part of the globe when I look below my monitor.
|
| I bought this one for the dining room (50$):
| https://www.waypointgeographic.com/p/little-adventurer-globe -
| the kids can spin it around whenever we talk about a country.
| zokier wrote:
| Somehow I'm reminded of these "How Big Africa[/Texas] Really Is"
| memes https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2365729-relative-map-
| sizes-h...
| ubermonkey wrote:
| See also: "Long Chile"
|
| https://craigcalcaterra.com/blog/long-chile-ohio2-and-the-sn...
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| > _We should be wary of flattening balls!_
|
| I agree.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I studied geography in undergrad and grad school. At the
| beginning a friend and I decided upon a challenge to use as many
| different projections as possible for labs and reports.
|
| I got to 53, I think. Only once did a TA say it was an
| inappropriate choice and, yeah, it was. I used an arctic planar
| projection to map a part of southern Ontario. It was so comically
| skewed.
|
| By the end I had actually learned something: my perception of
| what was "correct" was largely biased from growing up with
| Mercator and Albers maps. While some options are more ideal than
| others given the context, there's a _lot_ of useful alternatives
| than what we all picture in our heads.
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