Yet another reason to tut at the Mercator map projectionhttps://brilliantmaps.com/mercator-vs-true-size/

@infobeautiful Very useful to see. Done by a professional, so I must be wrong, but where I am (north New Zealand) is at about the same latitude as San Francisco, but we seem to be less shrunk?

Re discussion about more realistic projections, my favourite is Cahill-Keyes. http://www.genekeyes.com/world_map_poster.html

@malte @infobeautiful

Yeah, I would rather just see a new map than this.

OK, here's two:

http://www.authagraph.com/projects/description/%E3%80%90%E4%BD%9C%E5%93%81%E8%A7%A3%E8%AA%AC%E3%80%91%E8%A8%98%E4%BA%8B01/?lang=en

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map

@infobeautiful https://realcountrysizes.com/

@infobeautiful it all depends on what the purpose of the map is.

@lokjo
Thanks, I'll fix it.
@stevefaeembra @x_tof @infobeautiful

@edgeofeurope @infobeautiful Indeed. I feel that the anti-Mercator abuse neglects what the projection is good for, and what practical problem it was invented to solve.

@infobeautiful

A very bad graphic. The point is taken but that map is very inaccurate. Eg the Canadian southern border should fit perfectly with the USA but it is shrink way too much. There are much better maps which account for there projection errors.

@infobeautiful

What this map shows is that America's penis (Florida) is much smaller than Americans think.

@quixote @infobeautiful I have a feeling that it looks this way because NZ is smaller so, though the percentage difference is about the same, the absolute difference is smaller and less obvious to the eye in this colour scheme – at first glance, I don't see the NZ area difference at all because the colours are so close. Which means that the map maybe wasn't really made by an especially expert expert. Or else that the colour scheme was chosen exactly for that reason: to show that the southern lands are mistakenly thought to be much much smaller than they really are, relative to the northern. My son's godparents had no idea how big New Zealand was until they came to visit us; they were initially planning their trip on the understanding that the whole country was about the size of New England. These are Ivy educated people, both PhDs, both academics. Even they fell for it.

The more interesting thing that I see on this map is how, because the latitudes are omitted, the area scaling looks so asymmetric – you can't see that the equator is markedly within the lower half rather than through the middle and a lot of people have little idea of where the equator is. I have a feeling that this is its primary intention.

Still, the primary point of the Mercator projection is that it's good for compass navigation. Our failure to teach this is the problem – hiding the purpose sets learners up to use maps inappropriately for their whole lives.

@BobDevney @infobeautiful You can’t do that.

@bruce you beat me to it >.< @infobeautiful

@infobeautiful oh look how tiny #murica really is... just like his hands

@infobeautiful Someone please fwd this to trump

@infobeautiful "Yet another"? Isn't that the one single reason why people keep tutting at it all the time?

(And, sadly, many probably think that Mercator is the only projection with this particular distortion or that there are ideal projections that don't distort anything.)

@libroraptor @infobeautiful Indeed! I was surprised to hear that NZ is about the same size as California from top to bottom and side to side. They have a lot of nerve just constantly dropping us off world maps all the time, don't they?

@infobeautiful i’m definitely a fan of the Peters Projection.

I clearly remember a 🤯 moment from first or second grade when I saw it for the first time!

@infobeautiful
Which is which? Where's the key on this visualization?

@infobeautiful Pro tip: If you stretch Peter's projection "widescreen", it retains more of the shapes of the continents you are used to. (This might be my favorite world map)

@Osteopenia_Powers @stevefaeembra @lokjo @x_tof @infobeautiful
Finally a map with a biblically accurate Australia