
The True Size of Africa - Misleading Maps - gurvinder
http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/07/01/the-true-size-of-africa-have-our-maps-been-misleading-for-over-500-years/#_
======
zeteo
>have our world maps been wrong or misleading for 500 years?

No, they were just used mainly for navigation. The reason why the Mercator
projection was popular for so long is that its angles correspond to compass
points and you navigate by a trivial algorithm:

1\. Draw a line to your destination on the map and determine its angle with
the north, say 25 degrees north-east.

2\. Set your course at 25 degrees north-east and keep it constant. Your will
arrive to your destination by a rhumb line [1], which is only slightly less
efficient than a great circle.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhumb_line](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhumb_line)

~~~
arrrg
Oh, so what you are saying is that they have been wrong and misleading for the
past 500 years?

Yeah, projections are always wrong and misleading in some ways and it’s
certainly important to point that out – but the Mercator projection has
certain properties that are desirable for navigation but also properties that
are completely undesirable for how many maps are typically used today. All
that navigational stuff? Completely irrelevant for all typical use cases
nowadays. Distortions of sizes? Quite relevant for typical use cases.

Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s good.

~~~
saurik
a) zeteo doesn't seem to be saying it is "good". b) The statement that
something is "misleading" is a tense that indicates some kind of objective
truth, potentially even an intention; this objectivity is certainly the case
once the word "wrong" is used: "wrong" implies a rather strong statement about
the map. zateo is thereby providing the context to understand that the map has
a purpose, and what that purpose is; I am not certain why your response seems
to take offense at that. If you are willing to state something is "wrong" if
you are using it incorrectly, then all attempts to demonstrate any form of
information ever are "wrong".

------
oofabz
When you project a map, there are three properties you would like to maintain:
shape (aka conformality), size (aka equal-area), and direction. But you can
have at most two of these properties.

Mercator preserves shape and direction at the expense of size. Peters
preserves size and direction at the expense of shape. Peirce Quincuncial
preserves shape and size at the expense of direction. Here's a transverse
Peirce Quincuncial map I generated:
[http://frammish.org/tpq.jpg](http://frammish.org/tpq.jpg)

Many other projections try to combine these, like the Miller projection
maintains direction but strikes a balance between shape and size, getting
neither one right, but neither is horribly wrong either. The Winkel Tripel
projection tries to balance all three attributes.

~~~
JacobiX
This is a consequence of theorem discovered by Gauss: Theorema Egregium
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theorema_Egregium](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theorema_Egregium)

------
aleyan
Obligatory XKCD: [http://xkcd.com/977/](http://xkcd.com/977/)

I wonder if there is some sort of theorem that describes which fidelities you
can get out of a flat projection of the surface of a sphere. For example, a
projection could have accurate area ratios or accurately reflect point to
point distances but not both.

~~~
curiousdannii
A spherical globe still counts as a projection of our non-spherical planet!

~~~
D9u
I've always preferred using a globe to get a perspective on the Earth and the
various positions of continents and nations.

------
jere
>The Peters Projection World Map is one of the most stimulating, and
controversial, images of the world. When this map was first introduced by
historian and cartographer Dr. Arno Peters at a Press Conference in Germany in
1974 it generated a firestorm of debate.

I'm not sure any of this is really accurate. Go read the wikipedia page:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall%E2%80%93Peters_projection#...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall%E2%80%93Peters_projection#Controversy)

tl;dr:

-Peters wasn't novel. An identical projection was created a century earlier (that's why it's called Gall-Peters).

-Peters made completely BS claims about his projection.

-Cartographers had already been using plenty of projections beyond Mercator for a long time and they knew very well that it had problems.

By the way, I'm pretty sure the xkcd about projections has a punchline and
hover text that is directly related to the information above.

~~~
mcv
I get the impression that calling it Peters instead of Gall-Peters is a good
sign that the speaker is a Peters-evangelist, rather than someone who actually
cares about cartography.

------
whatshisface
The peters projection doesn't solve the size problems, it just moves them
around.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map)

If you are interested in a size-accurate map, you can't get much better than
that.

~~~
scott_karana
I was hoping to see someone post that. :-)

I've always wondered, however; why not increase the density of faces (or
vertices?) from an icosahedron, and have an even less distorted map? What
would the monstrosity look like?...

~~~
Someone
To make it less distorted, you will have to make more cuts, seriously
increasing the risk that the map does not accurately show the distance between
points P and Q because the shortest path between them on the globe goes
through a cut on your map.

In the limit, you could get something like
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goode_homolosine_projection](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goode_homolosine_projection),
but with infinitely many lobes. And that is a _could_: you can add branches
like in Dymaxion wherever you feel like it.

~~~
scott_karana
Thank you! :-)

------
Terretta
Having lived in equatorial Africa for a decade, and having spent weeks driving
to cross a single given country, I always get a kick of out conversations
where someone asks, "Oh, you lived in Africa--did you know So-and-so?"

~~~
jere
>"Oh, you lived in Africa--did you know So-and-so?"

Wow. That question is annoying enough when the subject is a large university.
I can't believe you were asked that.

~~~
ImprovedSilence
But sometimes, you do know them, and it's like HOLY SHIT SMALL WORLD. I was on
a subway in Paris one night with two friends. A group of (American) girls
heard us speaking english, we got to talking, they found out where I went to
school (Penn State, huge effin uni), and were like "do you know so and so".
Turns out so and so was my roommates ex-girlfriend. Small world, eh?

------
wismer
Not that it is terribly relevant, but I question the authors aptitude in
science journalism. I encourage anyone curious to see his articles on the
vaccine/autism controversy. Oh, and he's a 9/11 truther, illuminati
conspiracist, etc., etc.

CE sucks.

------
benologist
This article has been reworded by blogs since 2010 some time:

[http://calabarboy.com/2010/10/11/the-true-size-of-africa-
kai...](http://calabarboy.com/2010/10/11/the-true-size-of-africa-kai-krause/)

~~~
leeoniya
pardon me, but where's Alaska?

they list 9.629M for USA, Google says 9.827M. Alaska, according to Google =
1.718M.

WAT?

~~~
pacala
Where is Canada? If we are to count huge landmasses hostile to human
habitation, here we are:

Sahara desert: 3.629 million sq miles (9.4 million km²) Canada: 3.855 million
sq miles (9.985 million km²)

------
DrewHintz
[https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10201142599660581&se...](https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10201142599660581&set=a.1115508721397.19900.1037339110&type=1)

~~~
fideloper
This is regrettably hilarious. I'm laughing in shear disappointing hilarity.

~~~
austinz
I'm almost disappointed that he didn't stick North America in there with the
rest of them.

------
mcv
Gall-Peters clearly has the best PR, since it always gets mentioned as the
primary candidate for a replacement map. And while it's definitely more
suitable for getting a good "feel" for the world than Mercator, the enormous
shape distortions still don't make it a very good map. There are better ones
out there.

Personally I'd prefer a map that emphasizes that the world is actually a
sphere, rather than a rectangle. I also have a soft spot for Dymaxion,
although I don't use Dvorak.

~~~
manojlds
But you do use XML?

~~~
mcv
I do, though not as much as I used to.

------
Bhel
Rather than misleading maps, I'd say misleading title: The article asks if
we've been using misleading maps for over 500 years and then presents an
alternative which is just as misleading (another rectangular projection, just
as Mercator).

------
jkarni
I'm a little disappointed in HN for the fact that this is on the front page.
The wikipedia article on Gall-Peters is much more accurate and informative,
and even the whole (misleading) "oh look what I just found out but barely
anyone else knew" thing with projections has been done before, and better
(e.g., by Arno Peters himself).

I might take up the project of posting the relevant wikipedia links as
stories, and in turn linking those in the comments of all shoddily written
blog posts, in the hope of righting these wrongs.

------
raverbashing
Africa is big. The Sahara desert is also big.

But this whole "true size" is true in measure, but I'm not really comfortable
with people using it to push their agenda

Yes, Africa is big, and?

Big countries (yes, Africa is not a country) are usually on the wrong side of
the stick. Maybe the USA has the most usable land, but it's still costly for
them

Asia is gigantic, where's its population? Concentrated into tiny spaces!
Japan, Indonesia, a narrow stretch of India.

~~~
Tloewald
And um China.

~~~
raverbashing
Yes, in China it's concentrated on coastal areas mostly

[http://humangeography.wikispaces.com/file/view/ChinaIndiaPop...](http://humangeography.wikispaces.com/file/view/ChinaIndiaPopDensity800.jpg)

~~~
Tloewald
It's concentrated in coastal areas pretty much everywhere.

------
jliechti1
I'm confused...I thought the Robinson Projection [1] has been the standard for
quite some time.

Obviously not the best for navigation, but considered the best compromise for
viewing the entire Earth in two dimensions.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_projection](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_projection)

~~~
zokier
> I'm confused...I thought the Robinson Projection [1] has been the standard
> for quite some time.

If only. Mercator projection is still quite widespread. Try google image
search of world map.

~~~
micampe
Google Maps itself is mercator when fully zoomed out.

~~~
ygra
Also when zoomed in. For computer maps it certainly has nice properties when
your map is rectangular. Not that Mercator is the only one that is, but it's
probably the most-widely known.

------
mellamoyo
See [http://xkcd.com/977/](http://xkcd.com/977/) for a summary of even more
types.

~~~
Someone
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_map_projections](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_map_projections)
has many more.

------
shadylane
Why does no one seem to care that the bottom 15 degrees is missing from
virtually every projection? If it's just because it's un-inhabited why not cut
off the top 15 degrees as well?

~~~
Fomite
Among other reasons, because the top 15 degrees aren't uninhabited.

~~~
shadylane
Well, technically the bottom 15 degrees aren't either. What are the other
reasons? Because you don't need to navigate around it to get somewhere else?
If you're just going to omit parts of the globe because they're empty, why
bother mapping seas or the Sahara Desert?

------
rwmj
I have a globe, which should be the best way to represent the earth's surface.
However even that is biased -- I'm fairly sure the UK is bigger than it should
be.

------
_random_
What the fuck? There is an "Eastern Europe" country now? Ukraine alone is
larger than Spain.

------
Ellipsis753
Maybe some kind of globe like this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah_gXnjjdk4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah_gXnjjdk4)
or [http://workshop.chromeexperiments.com/globe-
search/](http://workshop.chromeexperiments.com/globe-search/) is best?
Otherwise just buying a standard globe will do just fine. Peter's is hardly
better. It still destroys the appearance of the earth quite badly.

Personally I really like this one:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map)
It's basically a net that you can print of and fold together.

------
InclinedPlane
Antarctica is also the size of Europe. So what? What does geographical size
have to do with anything? Kazakhstan is the 9th largest country in the world.
What does it mean?

It means that geographically, Kazakhstan is the 9th largest country in the
world. And not much else.

------
cshimmin
Reminds me of this mercator projection puzzle: [https://gmaps-
samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/poly/puzzledr...](https://gmaps-
samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/poly/puzzledrag.html)

------
KevinEldon
I knew Africa was large. I did not know that Antarctica is larger than Europe
at 5.5 million square miles (Europe is 4.0 million square miles).

I did not like the picture showing various countries contained within Africa.
Why is Alaska not considered part of the "US"?

Several times while driving North through mid-western States I've been
startled to realize how much land is north of the US border in Canada. I knew
Canada was larger than the US, but I didn't comprehend the scale of that
country.

~~~
gvb
I looked at his packing... he is comparing _countries_ to a _continent._ In
physics, that is called mixing units and your professor marks the answer
wrong, regardless of whether the number is "correct."

~~~
ljf
He is comparing land masses. If he wanted he could stick a city in there for
good measure, it's all about comparing things people can images with other
things... No mixing of units here.

------
arbuge
To put this in perspective, the area of Alaska, the largest US state, is twice
that of Texas - many Americans have at least a basic idea of how large Texas
is, if not Alaska. The area of Africa is 18 times that of Alaska.

------
cpeterso
btw, the surface area of the moon is about the same as Africa's.

------
mncolinlee
I've been saying this for years. The Earth is egg-shaped and fatter in the
southern hemisphere, not a perfect sphere. Logic would dictate that any
surface with steep mountains, continental tectonic shifts, and deep trenches
is not perfectly spherical. Coincidentally, I have an uncle who was a
geodecist and one of the world's GPS experts.

I knew college professors who believed that most map projections have a
eurocentric bias, but it makes almost as much sense that creating maps and
globes is easier to do if you assume the Earth is a perfect sphere.

~~~
jlgreco
Those things, while important to consider if you are trying to do something
like hit hit a target within a few kilometers with an ICBM
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Geophysical_Year](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Geophysical_Year)),
are not significant when dealing with general purpose mapping.

------
eksith
I think at this point, those with means should switch to holograms. After all,
it's often those with means who can influence those without.

------
Nitramp
Why does he describe the map as including "[...] Argentina and three
Scandinavian countries"? Neither of those is on the map.

------
moomin
For the purposes of most policy making, it would be better to scale maps by
population. This would make Africa much smaller.

------
Sujan
OT: I love this article just for including the "west wing" video.

------
cafard
Next up: north is not really up, and south is not really down.

------
Pxtl
Brazil is pretty huge in Gall-Peters too.

------
ScottyE
Hooray for globes

------
icecreampain
A word of warning to visitors: the site is broken. It pops up an ad after
about a minute of letting you read the content.

I've seen this behavior previously (it's becoming more common) and I reward it
the same way each time: closing the site and putting it on my proxy's
blocklist.

~~~
ljf
Sure you don't have some sort of virus or Malware? Didn't do that for me on a
couple of browsers.

~~~
icecreampain
Quite sure. It popped up something about "liking" them on this thing called
"Facebook", which I've gathered is some form of virus that has infected the
minds of most individuals on the net.

------
felixr
West Wing - Why we are changing maps?
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8zBC2dvERM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8zBC2dvERM)

~~~
eieio
You know this video is linked like 4 sentences into the article, right?

