241–250 of 351 posts
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> 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?
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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 p…
A globe is not a map projection. With a globe you can only see part of Earth at once.
Which is why that West Wing clip is, frankly, pretentious, because it doesn’t discuss the negatives of Peters, wrongly implies that it’s “the” correct way to view the world, and makes no mention of other major projections, or even a globe.
Choice of map projection is all about context. Peters is sensible in a particular context; Mercator in another; a globe in another. My usual projection of choice is Albers, which is typically great for the continental US, but I probably wouldn’t use it so much if I regularly made maps of other places!
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…
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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 second sentence of the article strongly implies some nefarious concentration of power and wealth among the globally powerful countries is at the root of the popularity of mercator projections.
It does imply that poor countries around equator are bigger then they look like. That is it.
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> People have a problem Why do you presuppose that others infer & arrive at the same interpretations you do? Isn't your own form of generalization from the subjective inferences made from your own individual mind, to the thoughts of others, presumptuous? I'm getting tired of the progressive tendency to read offence, bigotry, racism, sexism, transphobia, etc. into every little word & minutiae of nuance uttered by othe…
Did you read the post? I didn't think it was too subtle. Especially because it was so out of place.
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> 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…
> 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…
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The vast majority of items are manufactured in Asia now, especially globes. By your logic, should they unilaterally start printing Asia in the center?
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.
Then you changed it to who designed the maps.
In your last sentence you implied that the buyers make the decision.
Make up your mind?
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 d…
It uses fewer major triangular sections, has a more regular pattern to it, and best of all tries to keep the equator more or less horizontal.