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The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

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Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#311

Post by respectattentio »

respectattentio wrote: post #236
holgerschurig wrote: post #151

Weird title. Cargography constantly challenged itself. Look at some of the possible projections at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projections They all compromise on something to enhance something else. You simply can't map the surface of a 3d shere (approximation of the earths globe) onto a 2d flat surface. And so we have projections galore. And anyway was (and is) always free to use whatever fits best.

It is insane how the big mistake lasted. After seeing each country before and after side by side on a website, it's insane how big the difference in false sizes of countries compared. Like Greenland vs Africa, come on man!! This must be a joke (and still lasted 457 years).

If anyone wants to see it: Africa vs Greenland on the old UN world map side by side with the new one

https://newworldsize.com/old-vs-new/compare/africa-vs-greenl...

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#312

Post by watwut »

skew-aberration wrote: post #133
petermcneeley wrote: post #116

Ya people have no idea how big Africa truly is Here is the UK in Africa: https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTAyODQ3Nzg.NTkyNDI2Nw*... Note of course this includes Scotland! The traditional English are basically a dot.

I don't get why people say this / focus on Africa in this conversation. I've never thought Africa was small and was taught about the Berlin Conference, etc in school. All the large continents are near the equator and hence the relative size of Africa, Australia, North/South America, Asia is not affected much by the projection. Antarctica is big too, even though wildly exaggerated by Mercator. If anything, it makes mo…

The imitiave was brought im by African countries. They wamt to look bigger and it is their argument. That is why it is a topic.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#313

Post by nickdothutton »

stkdump wrote: post #293
nickdothutton wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought everyone learned the Mercator use case in school? It is for marine navigation. A line of constant bearing will always appear straight on it. If you want to see the relative size of continents that's a different use case and you need a different projection.

A line of constant bearing will always be a great circle. A straight line on a mercator projection of the earth does not constitute a great circle (in fact only the equator line is a great circle and each vertical line is half of a great circle).

If you follow a constant compass heading you will spiral toward the poles in a helix, not travel in a circle around the globe. To travel along a great circle, your compass bearing must constantly change as you move.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#314

Post by xigoi »

respectattentio wrote: post #274
Citizen_Lame wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you even why the Mercator projection is still being used? And no, it's not a mistake.

How it is not a mistake? Because as you see, old map is everywhere and is used for everything. Just open Google Maps and see. It's not fair to make a false map a standard being used for everything.

Meractor is no more of a “false map” than any other projection.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#315

Post by xigoi »

flexagoon wrote: post #16
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #6

Robinson projection is a good enough, boring compromise, if the UN was interested in that.

Here's an image I made to show the difference between Robinson and Equal Earth: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Comparison_of_Equal_... Whichever you prefer, what matters is that we should all just stop using Mercator.

Who is “we”? Some maps use Mercator, some don’t.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#316

Post by stkdump »

nickdothutton wrote: post #313
stkdump wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A line of constant bearing will always be a great circle. A straight line on a mercator projection of the earth does not constitute a great circle (in fact only the equator line is a great circle and each vertical line is half of a great circle).

If you follow a constant compass heading you will spiral toward the poles in a helix, not travel in a circle around the globe. To travel along a great circle, your compass bearing must constantly change as you move.

Seems I got terms confused. Thanks for clearing that up.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#317

Post by WelkinFolk »

GJim wrote: post #254
WelkinFolk wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least from my own experience, the map used the most throughout school was the Mercator projection. When I first discovered that Greenland and Canada were not really that big during one of my many wikipedia tours as a kid, I was incredibly disappointed.

Are you saying that as a kid, you never had a globe in your geography classroom? Seriously?

I mean, of course we were shown a globe "once". My father had one at home too, though tucked away under a mountain of files and other things in his gigantic cabinet.

But 99% of the time, a kid would see the world via maps in books, notebooks, projected onto the board, etc.

And we didn't have a "geography classroom". We had one classroom for a set number of kids - like 8A, 8B, etc. (where "8" is the class/grade). The teachers would come in and go as per the period. The kids stayed right where they were.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#318

Post by dekervin »

graemep wrote: post #209
xyzelement wrote: post #73

As the article says, all protections have some distortions and it's just a matter of which ones you chose. It's totally reasonable and rational for the African association of cartographer to push for this change - it makes their continent look bigger. At the margin, their children can look at the map and feel more significant. On the flip side, this particular map makes Europe look smaller. So it means that at the ma…

Why does the size of a county's territory matter so much? Russia is much bigger than the US or China, is it more important? Australia has about three quarters of the land area of the US, is it as significant?

Humans live in a world made of symbols. A sign, in this case a map, carries much more than its literal meaning. It is loaded with context, connotation, and even myths.

Maps are extremely powerful signs because they implicitly claim to organize the physical world. Consider, for example, the reference viewpoint of a map regardless of other features.

The first time you see a map centered on another continent makes you realize that your vision of the world, where some parts are peripheral, is relative. Even if that fact is obvious.

I don't know exactly what the effects of a change of projection are, but I know they exist.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#319

Post by nickdothutton »

stkdump wrote: post #316
nickdothutton wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you follow a constant compass heading you will spiral toward the poles in a helix, not travel in a circle around the globe. To travel along a great circle, your compass bearing must constantly change as you move.

Seems I got terms confused. Thanks for clearing that up.

Spend some time in Flight Sims :-)

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#320

Post by GJim »

WelkinFolk wrote: post #317
GJim wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that as a kid, you never had a globe in your geography classroom? Seriously?

I mean, of course we were shown a globe "once". My father had one at home too, though tucked away under a mountain of files and other things in his gigantic cabinet. But 99% of the time, a kid would see the world via maps in books, notebooks, projected onto the board, etc. And we didn't have a "geography classroom". We had one classroom for a set number of kids - like 8A, 8B, etc. (where "8" is the class/grade). The…

Good Lord! I can only suggest that your education system was in a state of failure.
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