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Maps distort how we see the world

unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com

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Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#101

Post by interroboink »

jefftk wrote: post #59
interroboink wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> that page failing to load for me (Firefox) Weird; testing on a Mac with Firefox it loads fine. Anything interesting in the console?

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.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#102

Post by TiredGuy »

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.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#104

Post by tick_tock_tick »

eldaisfish wrote: post #72
js2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

Almost no one lives in the south so they are never swapped.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#105

Post by snoman »

JackFr wrote: post #94
eddythompson80 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 th…

> 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.

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?

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#106

Post by tick_tock_tick »

luxurytent wrote: post #50

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…

> 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.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#107

Post by bluepod4 »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #58
trhfhxggf wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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."

> 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.

Exactly.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#108

Post by Waterluvian »

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.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#109

Post by netsharc »

Fauntleroy wrote: post #13

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.

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...

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#110

Post by gjm11 »

ximus wrote: post #92

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://w…

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.
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