It is time to 'Correct the Map'
correctthemap.org
It is time to 'Correct the Map'
1–10 of 42 posts
Re: It is time to 'Correct the Map'
#2I assume it's my colorblindness, but on mobile when I move that slider back and forth I just see blue outlines appear around the countries with no other distinguishable changes.
Re: It is time to 'Correct the Map'
#3I assume it's my colorblindness, but on mobile when I move that slider back and forth I just see blue outlines appear around the countries with no other distinguishable changes.
I am not color blind AFAIK, and I had to move the slider back and forth many times to try to understand what they are trying to show (even though I kind of knew what to expect).
Not the best visualization I should say.
The colors could have been better used to highlight the difference IMO.
Re: It is time to 'Correct the Map'
#4Different projections have different uses. There's no one "correct" projection and anyway I've seen plenty of world maps using projections other than Mercator for quite a number of years now.
Re: It is time to 'Correct the Map'
#5This is a very weird sounding pretense. Why does it matter if Africa in particular is bigger on the map compared to other countries and continents? How does area matter in general? It's not like we can infer anything useful from area comparisons. Also the map that is proposed (with the kinda-oval shape) is a map that I've seen a lot in school right next to now more common Mercator, and I'm from now here close to Africa.
Re: It is time to 'Correct the Map'
#6How does it fit into this xkcd?
Re: It is time to 'Correct the Map'
#7Everyone knows Greenland is the real proponent of the Mercator projection. Using the unfair influence of their massive perceived size on the map to unfairly inflate their importance in global politics and economics. It's time to put Greenland back in its place.
Re: It is time to 'Correct the Map'
#8All of the maps are awful at a global levels. If you fix one problem another comes up.
I am be surprised at the number of maps we look at today given that often we are looking at digital screens that could display an interactive globe as easily as a distorted old map.
Re: It is time to 'Correct the Map'
#9Every 2D projection of a 3D surface will be wrong in some way. It's just a matter of which attributes you want yo compromise on and which you want to be accurate.
As I understand it, Mercator mostly preserves relative distances between continents, at the expense of distorting continent shape & size. This is useful for ocean-based trade route calculation, which was a major concern when Mercator was introduced.
Most regions these days have a standard projection they use that best represents their country and modern GIS software can trivially reproject data in whatever format your project is using.
For example, in NZ, New Zealand Transverse Mercator is normally used. We used to use New Zealand Map Grid, which better represents our country, but the govt decided to switch the official one to better integrate with overseas data & software. Modern software allows you to trivially use either though.
Tl;Dr: map projections matter, but different ones are better for different purposes in different places. The African Union can use whatever they want, and everyone else can use what is most useful for their maps. No need for everyone to use the same system when we can use both.
Re: It is time to 'Correct the Map'
#10I assume it's my colorblindness, but on mobile when I move that slider back and forth I just see blue outlines appear around the countries with no other distinguishable changes.
The colors and the sliders are both a bit extraneous to the point of the visualization, they're supposed to help but they kind of obscure the point.
For the northern landmasses, Greenland for example, the smaller outline is the equal-earth-projection, and the larger outline is the conventional Mercator projection. That's all there is to it.