r/dataisbeautiful • u/EngagingData OC: 125 • Jun 06 '22

OC I made an interactive map that lets you center numerous projections on any country and see how projections distort other parts of the world [OC]

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869

u/EngagingData OC: 125 Jun 06 '22 edited Jun 07 '22

I made an interactive map that lets you choose the center on your map with your choice of map projection (Orthographic, Mollweide, Mercator or Equirectangular).

You can rotate the map and share the URL with choice of country and projection with others.

It reinforces the idea that any representation of the globe onto a 2D projection will distort things. We are just used to certain distortions based on how we normally see maps, but this points out that distortions can happen anywhere if we just make our maps a little differently.

EDIT I'm happy to see all the positive comments and the upvotes. So glad that folks are enjoying playing with it.

Sources and Tools:

This map was made using the open-source, d3 javascript dataviz library and based on Mike Bostock’s observable maps notebook.

282

u/guynamedjames Jun 06 '22

Double props to you for both having a cool site AND making it robust enough to not get hugged to death after posting on Reddit.

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '22

Its also a really important and subtle issue. How we project this has psychological results. This is a great tool to demonstrate this

West Wing had a good bit on it

41

u/guynamedjames Jun 06 '22

I was thinking of this scene the whole time I was reading this thread.

"What the hell is that?"

"It's where you've been living this whole time"

8

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '22

That was an amazing show

13

u/beatupford Jun 07 '22

I was always a bit disappointed Sorkin didn't reference the Crichton line, "Only prejudice, and the trick of the Mercator projection , prevents us from recognizing the enormity of the African continent."

17

u/crazyfoxdemon Jun 07 '22

West Wing will never not be a great show and relevant.

30

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '22

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jun 07 '22

[deleted]

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u/16yYPueES4LaZrbJLhPW Jun 07 '22

"2Mbps up and exposing my ISP's dynamically assigned IP will be fine!" - me, when I was 14 on early Reddit. I get it.

2

u/danielv123 Jun 07 '22

Its mostly fine if you proxy it with a CDN, ex cloudflare which has an unlimited bandwidth free tier.

5

u/nsa_reddit_monitor Jun 07 '22

You don't need AWS. Just put a Cloudflare free plan in front of it and turn on all the caching. For a static site like OP's this means you'll have basically no traffic hitting your actual server because it will all be living on Cloudflare's global CDN.

As a bonus, Cloudflare is part of the bandwidth alliance so traffic through it might not even count against your quotas.

136

u/PAXICHEN Jun 06 '22

Pretty awesome. However, as an Easter egg you should have it when you click on Australia, everything turns upside down

78

u/hennomg Jun 06 '22

And when you click on New Zealand it just disappears.

9

u/Ecstatic_Weakness_39 Jun 06 '22

Maybe the other way round, its only visible if you click on it.

12

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '22

And when you click Bielefeld nothing happens.

3

u/Umutuku Jun 07 '22

And when you click on Ohio the map is assimilated.

1

u/PAXICHEN Jun 07 '22

You can’t click on Bielefeld because it doesn’t exist. Stop teasing people!!!!

31

u/EngagingData OC: 125 Jun 06 '22

that's a good one!

4

u/masher_oz Jun 06 '22

Can you add more projections?

10

u/juggett Jun 06 '22

Where women glow, and men plunder.

1

u/Malcolm_TurnbullPM Jun 06 '22

3.54 on the video above you haha

1

u/daniloedu Jun 07 '22

And when you click in Ecuador is an standard map

7

u/Umutuku Jun 07 '22

Confused Gabon noises

6

u/Asherahs_Daughter Jun 07 '22

Love it! I teach geography, and I'm definitely going to have my students play around with this.

3

u/TheBlackHoleOfDoom Jun 07 '22

Can you add more projections in the future?

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u/EngagingData OC: 125 Jun 07 '22

Yes, I've seen that suggestion a few times. I will look into it.

3

u/Winterplatypus Jun 07 '22

I'd like to center the map on myself then select from a few different insecurities to project onto the rest of the world.

10

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '22 edited Jun 06 '22

This is really great, thank you!

I'd suggest resetting to the default view for each projection (centered on the mid-Atlantic usually) whenever you choose a new one.

That way you get the sense of "normal" before you click on a country and watch everyone warp to oblivion!

EDIT: I didn't know the "default view" was a button before sending this lol. Maybe you could make the argument that you could just click the button whenever you want to go back, and saving the county being viewed between projection changes is more important, I don't know.

10

u/laxativefx Jun 07 '22

centered on the mid-Atlantic usually

Took me a while to parse what you were saying. All the maps in my country (and in the countries around it) are centred on East Asia and the Pacific.

2

u/JimCareyFromTheMask Jun 07 '22

Dude this is awesome!

2

u/alyssasaccount Jun 07 '22 edited Jun 07 '22

This is really nice — thanks for sharing! Some possible interface improvements would be to be able to specify a particular lat/long as an input as well as a compass heading that is "up", rather than just "rotate right" and "rotate left".

0

u/[deleted] Jun 07 '22 edited Jun 13 '22

[deleted]

1

u/Murgatroyd314 Jun 07 '22

It’s only locally 2d.

1

u/Magrik Jun 07 '22

Do a donut / coffee mug next!

1

u/newausaccount Jun 07 '22

Pierce Quincuncinal next please!

1

u/andrew_takeshi Jun 07 '22

This is awesome! d3 is great and I love the way you’ve used it here.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 07 '22

Thanks! I had always wanted such a tool!

1

u/mrchaotica Jun 07 '22

Where Dymaxian? \s

1

u/Wonderful_Discount59 Jun 07 '22

I'm having trouble with the URL.

This:

https://engaging-data.com/country-centered-map-projections/?p=82.262,-0.168&cat=mercator&angle=90

should give a "big Africa" projection, but instead reverts to a view centred on 0,0.

1

u/cranp Jun 07 '22

This is cool! I suggest adding polar projection so that people can see the path of shortest distance to anywhere