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

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

@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.

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

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

@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!

@stevefaeembra @lokjo @x_tof @infobeautiful
This one substitutes the Prime Meridian for the equator. (Hilarity ensues)

Yet another reason to tut at the Mercator map projection
https://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

@quixote @infobeautiful Here is a better Cahill-Keyes world map, without the extremely misleading overlaid rectangular grid. Instead, just actual geographic parallels and meridians are shown. Also, Antarctica is handled better, even if partially duplicated.

But as always with non-contiguous projections, there will be small or even large islands that get split, or at least separated widely from their close neighbours. And the easternmost bit of Siberia is cut off from the rest.

I am sure that if this was a widely used projection, people would also start more or less wild theories that distortions in this map projection is a cause of some foreign policies. (From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahill%E2%80%93Keyes_projection