
Boston public schools map switch aims to amend 500 years of distortion - kuon
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/mar/19/boston-public-schools-world-map-mercator-peters-projection?CMP=twt_gu
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jcranmer
Ah yes, map projections. Time for everyone to complain about why the
projection is inaccurate (because all of them are).

The problem with Gall-Peters is that it gives a misleading impression of
equatorial regions--it scrunches up the width and exaggerates the height.
Humans are bad at estimating area when the rectangles have different ratios
for their sides--notice how Africa appears to be the same size as Asia; in
reality, it's only ~⅔ the size.

So, yeah, the Mercator is horrible as a projection. Cartographers have known
that for over a hundred years. Yet if you want a better map projection, there
are several decent ones that are better than Gall-Peters (which is basically
the inverse of the Mercator: exaggerate the equator at expense of the poles).
Even if you limit yourself to equal-area, Mollweide and Eckert do better jobs
of avoiding shape distortion. Outside of equal-area, well, Robinson and Winkel
tripel tend to do very well, striking a decent balance between all of the
different kinds of distortions.

As a general rule of thumb, any map projection that insists that it depict a
globe as a rectangle seems to do very terribly.

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galago
Globes! I'm sure I had a globe in my classroom in grade school and I had one
on my desk at home. I'm sure they didn't represent the actual shape of the
earth, but much better in terms of visualization.

~~~
Stratoscope
Even if your globe is a perfect sphere, it's good enough for all practical
purposes. The difference between the Earth's diameter across the equator vs.
between the north and south poles is only 3.3 parts per thousand.

In other words, suppose you have a globe one meter in diameter and it is
(erroneously) a perfect sphere. The error is just a few millimeters, hardly
enough to notice or worry about on a globe of that size.

And that globe is _much_ better than any possible projection onto a flat map.

This is what's puzzling to me: instead of arguing about one map projection vs.
another, why don't they use globes instead to give a more accurate picture?
Then they could get into the interesting discussions about the compromises and
errors that all map projections make.

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Grue3
It's funny because Gall-Peters is one of the worst projections in terms of
distortion. It doesn't preserve shapes anywhere.

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kevin_morrill
Fun fact I recently learned: about 90% of world population is in the Northern
Hemisphere. I expected it to be lop sided, but not that much.

[http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/563-pop-by-lat-and-pop-
by-l...](http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/563-pop-by-lat-and-pop-by-long)

~~~
jcranmer
Not surprising. The equator runs under the bulk of Africa, through the middle
of Brazil and Indonesia. The Southern Hemisphere ends up containing about 80%
water, about half the landmass of the Northern Hemisphere. And about half of
the Southern Hemisphere's landmass is uninhabitable Australian or Antarctic
desert.

The more impressive fact is that half of the world's population lives in a
small-ish circle in Asia: [http://io9.gizmodo.com/more-than-half-of-the-
worlds-populati...](http://io9.gizmodo.com/more-than-half-of-the-worlds-
population-lives-inside-t-493103044)

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jinushaun
Wait? Schools still use Mercator?! Gall-Peters is even worse!

And the reason was social justice? How how the reason being science? The
Robinson and Winkel projections are much more accurate. The planet is
spherical, not rectangular.

This is about as idiotic and anti-science as teaching Creationism and
Intelligent Design in schools.

~~~
sheraz
Yeah completely agree. The article leads me to think the district made the
change for political reasons rather than scientific ones.

If that is true, then that is indeed disappointing. Sure, the kids may gain
more insights into cartography/geography, but I wonder if the lesson plan now
includes a false narrative of the oppressive white man made his continents
bigger because "racism."

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dano
West Wing vignette on the Gall-Peters projection

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVX-
PrBRtTY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVX-PrBRtTY)

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aaron695
And stop putting north up top every time.

Or even stop aligning with the earths spin occasionally.

~~~
coffeedan
[https://www.flourish.org/upsidedownmapimages/diversophy-
larg...](https://www.flourish.org/upsidedownmapimages/diversophy-large.jpg)

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candiodari
TLDR: switching to Gall-Peters rather than Mercator projector for the world
map. Apparently, jaws dropped, which speaks volumes about the quality of the
education here.

[https://xkcd.com/977](https://xkcd.com/977)

(The reason for the hate statement next to Gall-Peters is that the Gall-Peters
projection has been at the center of not just one, but multiple serious
political scandals over multiple centuries. Furthermore, the people who
introduced it lied about it, because the primary reason for Gall-Peters is not
mapmaking, or education, but "social justice", whatever that means. Exactly
what is wrong in 2016 with using a fucking globe or Google maps (which now has
a zoomed-out earth view on the satellite section). Also, please don't
politicize map projections, or if you absolutely must, Robinson is the way to
go)

~~~
cooper12
What do you mean "don't politicize maps"? Maps are one of the most political
things there are, with countless wars and disputes over territories,
boundaries, and their importance in navigation and imperialism. I also don't
get your claim that it isn't mapmaking—it's a map, look—or education, when
maps have a big role in history classes and affect one's worldview. It's about
striving for an accurate representation of our globe, and if you're against
that because "the evil SJWs!", maybe it's you who needs to stop politicizing
things. Regarding Google Maps, not every classroom is equipped with a
projector, and a globe would have to be really large for students to see them
and you'd need a 2D representation for student printouts anyway.

~~~
candiodari
The controversy is not about where borders lie, the controversy is about which
country appears the biggest on the map. How to draw the SAME borders so X
appears bigger, that's what were discussing. I assure you those wars and
disputes were not about the projection of those maps, but about what was drawn
on the maps.

If you want to go for accuracy in worldview, show people a globe. If you want
a map, Robinson projection is probably the way to go for "most accurate
looking". If you want to cross the dateline, and navigate easily, I'd still go
with Mercator I think.

~~~
cooper12
My point was that the whole concept of a map is political, even if the
disputes don't directly involve this issue with them. The whole world doesn't
use the Mercator projection, they use ones more suited towards representing
their hemisphere. That's politics.

As for your last point, the fact that you have to mention the drawbacks and
advantages of different maps shows that there isn't actually one right answer.
That's politics. Map choice has to accept limitations. You can't get a globe
everywhere, the 2D plane is still really popular in our world so it's not a
binary choice between "globe" and "Robinson", but rather "what exactly am I
looking for in a map". It is politics and you can't just immediately shut down
anything deviating from the status quo because "my way is the only way".

~~~
candiodari
I can argue to shut down anything in science that gets changed because of
political reasons, because there shouldn't be politics in science.

The further along we seem to get the worse it seems to get though. I did math,
statistics specifically, so ... well ever since climate change that's a lost
cause. And that's uniformly bad. Bad for the quality of people at university,
students and academics. Bad for the science itself. Bad for society (imho).
Bad for everyone.

The ONLY merit Gall-Peters has is this supposed "social justice" bullshit.
Neither Gall and Peters were honest. Neither of them had anything to
contribute to mapmaking. They just wanted attention and money. Get out. Just
... get out. Find a better reason, or please don't bother anyone.

~~~
cooper12
> there shouldn't be politics in science

Politics is unavoidable in science. There was never an era in which the two
weren't combined from phrenology to modern-day examples like global warming
which you mentioned. To expect science to be free from outside influence is
overly idealistic. Science needs funding. That fact alone makes it
inseparable.

> The ONLY merit Gall-Peters has is this supposed "social justice" bullshit.

Now you're just being dishonest. Did you miss the whole "equal area" thing?

> They just wanted attention and money.

Yeah map projection creators are rolling in royalties... You tell me to find a
better reason and you come up with bullshit like this, ha!

