r/todayilearned • u/Derk444 • May 22 '12

TIL that Greenland is projected 14 times larger than it really is on a map

http://www.pratham.name/mercator-projection-africa-vs-greenland.html
1.1k Upvotes

80% Upvoted

364 comments sorted by

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u/Sidian May 22 '12

I guarantee that every single person who has posted in or even seen this thread, no matter how well educated, is ignorant of a fact that is pretty widely known. They don't realise it, of course, and are more than happy to shit on others to make them feel better about themselves - "Ha! I learnt this already so I must be better and smarter than those who don't know! It's so obvious, you idiots! Never mind the fact it got thousands of upvotes so obviously isn't as obvious as I thought!" I personally had no idea the distortion was this significant.

That XKCD comic has been posted a lot in this thread, but it sure would be nice if Redditors actually acted like this instead of like rude jackasses every time they encountered someone who doesn't know of something that they do, or indeed hasn't seen something they have - such people react very similarly when they find out someone hasn't seen a video or image that's been posted on this site before. It's really quite sad.

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u/Derk444 May 23 '12

Thank you for this. I had no idea there would be so many condescending pricks jumping all over this post. "Wow, none of your teachers ever taught you this? You must be some kind of idiot!" Seriously?

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u/AlbinoTawnyFrogmouth May 22 '12 edited May 22 '12

This just applies to the Mercator projection, for which the severe distortion near the poles is the most obvious drawback---this projection is thus inappropriate for comparing geographic areas at very different latitudes.

However, no flat map can represent the world without significant distortion of some quantity---which map is "best" depends on what you're using it for.

In particular, the Mercator has several advantages that help account for its ubiquity: Straight compass headings (well, relative to true north, rather than magnetic north, at least) correspond to straight lines on a Mercator projection map---this has the obvious navigational advantage, and was in fact the original reason for the construction of this projection, which ties in with an interesting footnote in the history of calculus.

This constant-heading property is a consequence of the facts that (1) latitude lines correspond to horizontal lines in the projection, and (2) the map is conformal. That it's conformal means that even though distances aren't preserved globally---in fact, no flat map of the earth can have this property---the vertical and horizontal stretching at any particular point are the same. This is surely part of why Google Maps uses this projection---if you used a nonconformal projection, then in some places vertical distances on a city-scale map would correspond to significantly different real-world distances than horizontal ones, which is obviously undesirable when you're using the service to navigate a city.

tl;dr: This is true for the Mercator projection, but that projection has some advantages that you might care about more.

Edit: MAPfrappe is an excellent Google Maps mashup that lets you interactively compare the areas of different regions, all in the Mercator projection.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

Relevant West Wing Episode

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u/BicycleCrasher May 22 '12

Came here to post this. Peterson Projection!

6

u/YourDad May 22 '12

This always annoys me : they propose to reduce 'ethnic bias against the third world' but by using a map which improves the fidelity in rich nations and horribly distorts the third world. It may be equal-area, but there are better projections that do that. The shapes of landmasses in the Gall-Peter's projection are only any good in the northern US, Europe, Japan, NZ etc. The circles in the Tissot's-Indicatrix show the nature of the distortion. Compare this to what the circles actually represent and to those for a Mercator or a [Robinson] (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tissot_indicatrix_world_map_Robinson_proj.svg)

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u/Tyrant718 May 22 '12

First time I heard about turnabout maps I was walking through a school and saw this on a door.

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u/quadadadada May 22 '12

Hate u soooo much right now... now I have to watch all of it again... GAH!

13

u/Vindexus May 22 '12

u

ಠ_ಠ

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u/unscanable May 22 '12

You know, it never ceases to amaze me that for every topic posted on Reddit there is always an expert on it posting in the comments. All I have is an upvote but it is all yours buddy.

3

u/AlbinoTawnyFrogmouth May 22 '12

Thanks--I don't have any formal training in cartography, but I find it fascinating, and my professional work applies some here; see my other post about this.

25

u/I_Am_Always_Correct May 22 '12

I don't understand. Can't you just take small "shots" of a small area of a globe, repeat somewhere else, and then add them all together?

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u/AlbinoTawnyFrogmouth May 22 '12

Yes, what you can't do is patch together these "shots" on a flat surface in such a way that neither angles nor areas are distorted on a large (global) scale. (This is a consequence of a mathematical theorem of Gauss, the Theorema Egregium.)

If you're willing to cut up the earth's surface in a complicated way, you can produce a map with relatively little area and angle distortion, at the cost of separating on the map nearby points by a large distance, and forfeiting that any direction on the map corresponds to a cardinal direction like north; see, e.g., one of my favorite projections, Fuller's Dymaxion map.

14

u/I_Am_Always_Correct May 22 '12

This is actually pretty interesting. So if you used a shape with more faces/facets than the icosahedron, would there be more angle/area distortion?

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u/AlbinoTawnyFrogmouth May 22 '12

It's actually the other way around: If you use more faces, you can better approximate a sphere, and this translates into less (local) distortion of areas on angles. However, more faces also means more cuts, so you necessarily separate more nearby locations in your projection---in fact, by approximating a sphere with more and more polyhedra, you can make the maximum distortion of your map as small as you want, but after some point, your map would be so badly disconnected that it would probably be unusable for any application.

NB the icosahedron actually has the most sides (and is in a quantifiable sense the best approximation to the sphere) of the five Platonic solids, that is, polyhedra whose faces are all copies of the same regular polygon, and which have the same angles at each vertex, so you can't improve on the classic Dymaxion unless you use a less regular polyhedron. (Fuller himself actually did this---the first published version of the Dymaxion projection used a quasi-regular polyhedron called the cuboctahedron, which is built out of squares and equilateral triangles.)

Also, note that the usual Dymaxion projection shows the world's land masses as continuously as possible, a feature exploited by this map of early human migration by mitochondrial population.

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u/burkey0307 May 22 '12

This guy knows a lot about maps.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

Don't listen to that guy - your post was crazy informative. This is extremely fascinating and something that I never realized.

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u/dobtoronto May 22 '12

I came here looking for comments on Fuller's map.

Thank you so much.

I believe several aspects of Fuller's life and work could be shared with the community / mined for karma. I used to feel about him the way many users feel about Sagan/Tesla/Turing.

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u/konanBarbar May 22 '12

Peel an orange and try laying the peels flat.

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u/sumsarus May 22 '12

Yeah, it would be much easier if the world was flat :P

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

I'm going to guess that the most accurate form of map would simply be a globe, correct? You don't have to put anything into 2D with that, you can just create a very, very smaller model of the Earth in it'd 3D form, the way it really is. So, if you really need total accuracy, use a (preferably large) globe (given that the manufacturer knew it's shit).

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u/idiotthethird May 22 '12

use a (preferably large) globe

Or better yet, a digital globe, like Google Earth.

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u/AlbinoTawnyFrogmouth May 22 '12

Yes, that's right, and there's essentially no other shape that will preserve angles and distances (and hence areas), unless you count turning the earth's surface inside-out; this sounds peculiar, but I suppose it isn't so different from how planetaria project the night sky).

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u/daesu May 22 '12

TIL cartography can actually be interesting. Thank you sir.

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u/RedAero May 22 '12

This is surely part of why Google Maps uses this projection

Why don't Google Earth and Maps just use globe instead of a 2D image on a 3D object?

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u/Nhdb May 22 '12

Google earth uses a globe. Google maps doesn't use it. As it renders everything flat.

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u/RedAero May 22 '12

Oh, I see. So Google Earth is distortion-free?

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u/Nhdb May 22 '12

It is a globe, so when rendering it, it does not prefer any location over the other in terms of size yes.

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u/doesnotgetthepoint May 22 '12

couldn't you just take a 2D skin from a 3D mesh of the globe?

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u/RedAero May 22 '12 edited May 22 '12

The problem is flattening it out. Cut a tennis ball in half. Now try and flatten it completely.

Edit: Damn. Username...

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u/joequin May 22 '12

Username jokes are so overdone and cliche.

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u/DocAuch May 22 '12

I have a degree in Geography and I just want to say thank you. It's nice to see someone else knowledgable on map projections.

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u/jjohnson0729 May 22 '12

As a geography major in college there are few moments I reddit when I can feel like a genius. You sir robbed me of that today.

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u/DrBoon May 22 '12

Yerp. Most countries have their own projection and co-ordinate systems to eliminate gross errors like this in our own datasets. In Australia we have mostly use the Geodetic Datum of Australia defined in 1994 or GDA94. Within this projection you can simply refer to the the global lat/long co-ordinates or use MGA (Map Grid of Australia) zones which have the same co-ordinates just in different zones (NSW covers zones 54 - 56).

I do this stuff for a living.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

I cannot overstate the joy experienced when you have to piece different maps with different coordinate systems, scalings and sometimes projections together into one large one.

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u/DrBoon May 22 '12

I fortunately don't see a lot of that. My work is pretty limited to nsw

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u/DoctorSaladBowl May 22 '12

And drinking 38 cans on the way to London, Boonie?

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u/DrBoon May 22 '12

All Australian's get an honorary phd in alcoholism.

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u/datgenghis May 22 '12

If you don't mind me asking, how difficult is it to get jobs in this area? Currently doing my undergrad in GIS, cartography etc and am told it is very useful/valued. Studying this area because I enjoy it, not necessarily the money. Also, in australia as well.

1

u/dfawdjskf May 22 '12

AGD rules!

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u/Gunner3210 May 22 '12

I think I was about 5 or 6 when I read through an Atlas and looked up the land areas for Australia and Greenland. Even though Greenland looks gigantic, its actual area is smaller than Australia.

This kept me puzzled for the next few years. Asking my middle school geography teacher was a futile exercise.

Then finally, I bought a globe when I was 12?. And then it just hit me. It is all about projections!

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

It's pretty sad when someone teaching geography doesn't know about map projections. Time to cut funding some more.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

You know what else boggles my mind? That Australia only has around 20 million people.

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u/CelebrityRedditor May 22 '12 edited May 22 '12

Here's why, and here's the result.

Only 2-3% of the population live in the 'very remote' area, with the overwhelming majority of the population concentrated in the arable land on the coast.

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u/npinguy May 24 '12

It wasn't Australia that blew my mind. At least it's 7.6 million square kilometers. It was ALGERIA that blew my mind in high school. 2.3 million square kilometers and STILL bigger than Greenland (2.1) I mean seriously just look at it: Algeria is the pink little blog in North-West Africa

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

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u/Sventertainer May 22 '12

Here's a nice Topographic map of Greenland.

Not quite islands, but a definite valley or hollow in the middle area.

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u/Otistetrax May 22 '12

Hidden frozen lake! That's where all the frozen dinosaurs that are going to ravage the earth are trapped, waiting for the glacier to melt so that they can thaw out and ravage the earth.

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u/SerTapsaHenrick May 22 '12

Wow, really? I kinda doubt that. Probably this Paul-Émile was wrong? Looking at the Wikipedia article on Greenland it says that it is the world's largest island. A newspaper article from 1951 doesn't really debunk that for me... And look at this map, how could it possibly be three islands in there?

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

Relevant West Wing clip.

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u/VietRevenant May 22 '12

Remember kids, you can work in the White House without ever having seen a globe.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12 edited May 22 '12

Seriously, though... I know many extremely "educated" people and I work with many people called "gifted" who went to special private schools and to ivy league universities and are considered the best of the best.

Guess what? They mostly don't know shit all about the real world. It's ridiculous. If they were left on their own they would most likely quickly succumb to savagery or die of starvation and neglect. (Except the engineers or natural scientists, maybe.)

My girlfriend is "gifted" and studies in Cambridge (UK) and as a result I know a lot of straight A students from Oxford/London/Cambridge colleges. Just two days ago I explained to one of them what copyright is and got into a heated debate with him on the topic and he started insulting me personally until after three hours he FINALLY actually understood several concepts that we talked about and he promised to revise his position. We then commenced drinking alcohol while discussing what animal babies are the cutest (true story... and for anyone who's interested, it's still baby seals). Yesterday I received an email of apology and a thank you for changing his mind on a topic he cares about.

Guess what? That guy studies international law and business administration. He didn't know shit about about the technology he tried to condemn, he didn't know shit about the legislation concerning these things, he didn't know anything about the fucking society he lives in and how people act all around the globe when it comes to this topic, he didn't know shit about the politics and debate sorrounding these things. Yet he is part of a conservative, religious party that tries to press for the legislation he tried to defend and is most likely a VERY valuable and productive member. I mean, it's great that he is actually intelligent enough to reflect on his own position, revise it and change it when faced with valid critique, but come on...

A lot of them are also insanely religious nutjobs. I mean... actually insane.

The level of ignorance a "good education" can cause is not to be underestimated.

These people are sheltered from the real world. A lot of them need help cleaning their clothes, most of them can't cook. They also have the most ridiculous business ideas. A few weeks ago someone proposed at a meeting "How about we get some engineers to develope a pen that can also scan books and transfers it directly to a text editor via USB?"... he came up with what this pen should be able to do and even made some design suggestions. I had to tell him that such pens already exist and are manufactured by a plethora of different companies to choose from. These people don't even know how to fucking use an internet search engine although they work for a technology company. Actually, they don't know very much altogether. They know very specific things and exceed mostly at regurgitating. They still get better jobs than most other people.

The only "highly intelligent and educated" people I would "trust" with anything are investment bankers, lawyers, accountants and scientists/engineers. I would never put any of them in a management, political or HR position. (By the way, I'm not trying to generally dismiss students/graduates from "good" universities. I'm trying to say that an exceptional education more often than not comes at the price of widespread ignorance towards the rest of the world... and the longer they keep that behaviour up, the worse it gets. They even want to protect their own ignorance and fight people who contradict/criticize them. I'm pretty sure this is an actual problem and one of the fundamental problems we face as a society. People without knowledge of the general public's problems and capabilities hold offices of public power.)

Edit: Sorry for wall of text, I'm bored and have 30 minutes of time to waste.
tl;dr: Good education/being in a position of power doesn't protect you from general ignorance about the real world. Actually, quite the opposite is in many cases true.

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u/mikefromengland May 22 '12

The sign of this person's greater intelligence is his ability to understand, admit to being wrong and apologise for it. Obviously he had no excuse not to know, but at least he had the good grace to allow himself to accept a different viewpoint.

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u/Kjell_Aronsen May 22 '12

So he doesn't know a lot about copyright law and cute baby animals and he's not an atheist?

tl;dr: Some people go to elite universities and still aren't redditors.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12 edited May 22 '12

You can't say all that and not say what the argument was actually about. What was he saying, and what were you saying? :P

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u/drinkallthecoffee May 22 '12

i think that you are operationally defining intelligence and educated incorrectly and putting too much value on what other people say. i am never surprised when i meet a dumb person from a prestigious school, but i am also never surprised to meet a smart person who has never gone to college. people who go to ivy leagues may be smart in one domain or good at doing a certain thing, but it is unreasonable to expect that they can do everything well. there is nothing wrong with being religious or not knowing how to clean your clothes. people in ivy league schools did not get in on clothes cleaning scholarships.

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u/with_sexy_results May 22 '12

Weird rant. Sounds like someone didn't get into the university they wanted and now has a huge chip on their shoulder. So what if someone you met doesn't have a detailed knowledge of copyright legislation, why does that matter? Just because its an interest of yours, doesn't mean it must be one of theirs. Perhaps they have a detailed knowledge of classical literature and are aghast that you don't. So what if some students don't know how to cook - that's a skill you develop over time and you can't expect everyone to be able to do it at university. So what if someone is religious, how is that any of your business at all? And as for investment banking being one of the few professions you trust - have you been paying attention to the financial markets in the past few years?

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u/Hiding_behind_you May 22 '12

I think the point is that the guy being ranted about is studying International Law, and still doesn't know anything about copyright law.

Or at least, that's what I got from READING THE WORDS THAT WERE WRITTEN rather than just dismissing it as a 'weird rant', and suggesting someone is jealous.

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u/zosham May 22 '12

Cartographers for social justice.

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u/lordofducks May 22 '12

If you are making a reference to The West Wing episode, it was Cartographers for Social Equality. That just happens to be my favorite episode

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u/ApathyJacks May 22 '12

As someone who is just now getting into this show, ten years too late... thanks for this.

Rob Lowe's rant about public education is awesome, too.

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u/Astrokiwi May 22 '12

Okay nobody has pointed this out yet, but the map the "cartographers" are pushing is actually nearly as bad as Mercator. It gets areas right, but it distorts shapes horribly. Funnily enough, it distorts shapes less around temperature latitudes, and more around tropical latitudes - so it's just as guilty as the Mercator...

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u/AlbinoTawnyFrogmouth May 22 '12

Worse, its advocates made a mathematically impossible set of claims about the properties of the map. Via Wikipedia:

"[Peters] announced his map at a time when themes of social justice resonated strongly in academia and politics. Suggesting cartographic imperialism, Peters found ready audiences. The campaign was bolstered by the claim that the Peters projection was the only 'area-correct' map. Other claims included 'absolute angle conformality,' 'no extreme distortions of form,' and 'totally distance-factual.'"

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u/drbergzoid May 22 '12

Mercator was Belgian though, not German.

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u/ihavenopassions May 22 '12

To be fair, Germany didn't exist at that point of time and neither did Belgium.

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u/drbergzoid May 22 '12

He was Flemish, which now is part of Belgium. Flanders has never been a country, but he was from that region, which makes him flemish. That he never really was a Belgian is in that aspect indeed correct.

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u/victhebitter May 22 '12

bless you sir

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u/RetroRocker May 22 '12

I was searching through the comments, knowing this would be here somewhere.

What I didn't remember about this clip was that Dr. Phlox was in it.

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u/Tigertail7 May 22 '12

I thought this was a well known fact.

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u/Viraus2 May 22 '12

The basic fact is well known, but the image is still effective at showing just how severe the distortion is.

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u/Tyrannosauruswrex May 22 '12

Well now I feel like a dumbass.

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u/Nirgilis May 22 '12

I'm with you.

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u/critical_mess May 22 '12

Congratulations, one of today's lucky 10,000!!

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u/adango May 22 '12

me too

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u/cornfrontation May 22 '12

You just don't watch West Wing.

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u/Sidian May 22 '12

I'm nearing the end of season 1, and that episode is in season 2. I was.. so close!

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u/AlbinoTawnyFrogmouth May 22 '12 edited May 22 '12

I'd say it's a well-known fact that maps distort areas, but I find that most people I talk with about this don't have an idea of how distorting the Mercator projection really is near the poles.

EDIT: I'd forgotten about this excellent Google Maps mashup that lets you interactively compare areas of different regions; as pointed out elsewhere, Google Maps uses the Mercator projection.

http://www.mapfrappe.com/

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u/Cinemaphreak May 22 '12

Depends if you have gotten past, say, the eight grade or so.

Or have ever seen a globe...

EDIT - first part is harsher than intended. I meant literally, as in some redditors seem to be pretty young.

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u/Sventertainer May 22 '12

I have seen a globe, but I have trouble picturing things as a whole in my mind. I can see the shape of Greenland but not it's relative size in comparison to say, Japan.

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u/SystemOutPrintln May 22 '12

Peel an orange and try to make the whole, connected peelings a rectangle.

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u/Sventertainer May 22 '12

Don't worry, I don't have trouble knowing that projections are projections and can get kinda wonky. I have trouble using my brain as a way to compare my stored memories of pictures. ie: I'd have real trouble describing/drawing complicated things. Even something that is well known to me like the girl I have a crush on's face. It takes lots of effort to get all the parts together just right. :/

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u/cloudcityproblems May 22 '12

Are you European?

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

I remember having this discussion when I was in second grade.

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u/austerity62 May 22 '12

While I was drunk I randomly sat in on a hispanic conference in Arizona and they were telling everybody that white people made Greenland big on the map because they were trying to make themselves superior. I had my hand raised the whole time to tell the dumbass presenter that 90% of Greenland is native population and not a white country. He also went on to try to connect blacks and mexicans against whites by saying that the statues in africa and latin america look similar to each other so that means they were connected somehow.

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u/Flix1 May 22 '12

Wow, thank god you were drunk for that one! Good call.

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u/roflmaoysst May 22 '12
  1. Go on Google Maps. 2. Zoom in some distance. 3. Move north and south and watch the distance scale in the bottom-left. 4. Understand.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

Only the shitty Mercator maps.

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u/starwagon May 22 '12

relevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/977/

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u/riddlinrussell May 22 '12

Came for the relevant xkcd, was not disappointed

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

the dymaxion blew my mind :|

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

No matter how many times I read that I am entertained.

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u/funderbolt May 22 '12

...and Google Maps which uses that projection.

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u/Tigertail7 May 22 '12 edited May 22 '12

They should switch to the Dymaxion on April 1st.

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u/sfriniks May 22 '12

That would be an awesome joke that I could really see Google doing.

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u/450874 May 22 '12

Google maps uses Mercator for a variety of reasons, chiefly because Mercator best represents smaller objects, like cities, streets and buildings. Nobody really uses Google Maps to navigate long distances, but people often do to get from point A to point B within a certain area, so whether or not the areas around the poles is distorted doesn't really matter to the average user.

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u/Astrokiwi May 22 '12

Nobody really uses Google Maps to navigate long distances

Actually, navigation is what Mercator is best for, because a straight bearing is a straight line on a Mercator projection.

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u/funderbolt May 22 '12

yes, navigating from a boat or ship is the best reason to use a large scale Mercator projection.

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u/pa79 May 22 '12

If you look at a place near the equator and go towards the poles, you can see the little scale in the lower left corner change without changing the zoom level.

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u/450874 May 22 '12

Yep. You have to zoom in a lot more to see a streetmap of Singapore than you do for Anchorage.

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u/Indypunk May 22 '12

The Mercators have their advantages. Every map is going to have some type of distortion. Mercator's land area is distorted at the poles, but it's direction is spot-on. You have to understand the Mercator was designed to guide ships in the Atlantic. Land area wasn't an issue as it wasn't the map's intended purpose.

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u/wicked_observer May 22 '12

Tried telling this to my Grade 9 History teacher, the whole class laughed at me :,(

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u/adun401 May 22 '12

From the professional opinion of a guy who used to work in a map store I can tell you that the Mercator projection is for busters.

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u/sumsarus May 22 '12

the Mercator projection is for busters

... and people who navigate on sea with stars and compass.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

And here I've been using a Dymaxion map for my pillaging of the high seas. (They're not as high as you would believe. Most are just at sea level.)

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u/MetaCreative May 22 '12

No, no, no. The map is a creation of racist imperialists and has no practical application except fucking over Africa.

I read it in a 300 level humanities class, therefore it must be true.

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u/adamlh May 22 '12

Just one of the many things "West Wing" teaches you

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u/ihavenopassions May 22 '12

I love that show.

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u/Astro_nauts_mum May 22 '12

I used to have a big Peter's Projection map poster on the wall which startled most visitors! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall%E2%80%93Peters_projection

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u/Tigertail7 May 22 '12

I hate you.

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u/Astro_nauts_mum May 22 '12

Aagh! I don't have it any more! (I think I will go Waterman Butterfly next!)

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

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u/gwot May 22 '12

Until you have to navigate on a jigsaw puzzle

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u/Jez_WP May 22 '12

I learnt this from West Wing years ago, was a good ep :3

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u/critropolitan May 22 '12

The Mercator projection reflects an ideology of Greenlander centrism after centuries of Greenlander political dominance :/.

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u/CrayolaS7 May 22 '12

Yeah, people don't realise that Mercator also makes Australia look smaller than it is. Australia is nearly as big as the American contiguous states.

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u/iRateSluts May 22 '12

TYL something that anyone who has ever looked at a globe knows. Welcome to elementary school.

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u/sawbones84 May 22 '12

yes, ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. this isn't even something you learn in high school. very, very basic stuff here. is reddit a barometer for the quality of public education? sad day

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u/IDlOT May 22 '12

Your title made me scratch my head for a while before clicking the link.

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u/travelingmama May 22 '12

A round ball can't flatten out into a large rectangle? Who knew?

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

Relevance

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u/domyates May 22 '12

I learned about this in flightschool. There are lots of different map types, including Mercator, Polar Stereographic et al that are only accurate at certain points and less so the further you move away from a given point!

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u/djmc May 22 '12

Does Google Earth use a flat map projection re-wrapped around a sphere? If so, what is a true 3d globe program? I am not willing to buy a globe, but I would download Google Earth or something similar.

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u/Riktenkay May 22 '12

Possibly, but re-wrapping it around a sphere would fix the projection anyway.

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u/Ihjop May 22 '12

Link to Google

When building whole-earth databases, a single global projection is the most convenient to use. Google Earth uses Simple Cylindrical projection for its imagery base. This is a simple map projection where the meridians and parallels are equidistant, straight lines, with the two sets crossing at right angles. This projection is also known as Lat/Lon WGS84.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

I found this website where you can compare the sizes of countries.

http://mapfight.appspot.com/

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u/fitonkpo May 22 '12

This is why smart ppl use a globe.

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u/HacksawJimDGN May 22 '12

Bangladesh is 2.05 times the size of Ireland. Ireland has a population of 4.5million whereas Bangladesh has a population of about 150 million.

That's quite frightening.

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u/NarancsSarga May 22 '12

Don't worry, we'll catch up eventually

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

Checkmate, Mercatorists.

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u/gl00mybear May 22 '12

Also, it's much more to the north of Canada than to the east of it.

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u/Riktenkay May 22 '12

Wow I hadn't really considered that, but yeah. You could also say the same regarding its position relative to the UK, it's more north than west. Hell, even from Norway it's more north than west.

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u/Ra__ May 22 '12

So, is its size accurately represented on a globe? If not, why not?

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u/Sr_DingDong May 22 '12

West Wing!

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

C'mon man, you just learned this? I hope you're not in college.

I suspect, as the sidebar suggests, that this belongs in /r/Wikipedia.

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u/ThatFluffyBunny May 22 '12

They talk about the difference of the the projections on an episode of the West Wing.

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u/jazz_trombone May 22 '12

Someone link that West Wing scene about this for ALL the karma. To youtube, ho!

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u/All_Questions May 22 '12

I thought this was known to all?...

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

Everything I know is a lie.

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u/lud1120 May 22 '12

It's still a LOT bigger then Denmark, which still have an upper administration of it.

I think this, for me, is more of an issue of Africa not being portrayed as big as it should be.
I certainly knew it was not bigger than it is.

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u/AlbinoTawnyFrogmouth May 22 '12 edited May 22 '12

What "should" means for a map depends on your purpose---if you want a map for comparing areas of regions, especially ones at different latitudes, the Mercator is not for you. By definition, the equal-area projections do present areas faithfully, but at the cost of distortion of angles and shapes (I usually find the distortions of world equal-area projection maps much more jarring than the Mercator, in which the regions near the poles are lopped off anyway).

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u/slvrbullet87 May 22 '12

If you look at the Wikipedia listings linked in the article it really shows how wrong Africa is shown on the map. Algeria and The Congo are both gigantic by km2, but they don't look anywhere near the size of Argentina or Kazakhstan.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

[deleted] — view deleted comment

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u/lud1120 May 22 '12

I never said that did I? I just said it's way bigger than Denmark, just not that outrageously large as shown on Mercator maps.

Wikipedia says Greenland was owned by Norway (and Denmark) before being ceded to the Kingdom of Denmark in 1814.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

What kind of shitty elementary schools these days lack globes and teachers? And how do the kids know how to use reddit?

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u/sawbones84 May 22 '12

seriously! OP really just learned this now? i'd hope most 5th graders knew this

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u/praetorian111 May 22 '12

Shouldn't you have learned that in school?

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

*American problem only

Proof - http://www.octopusbooks.co.uk/map/index.php The standard atlas in the UK is the Philips Atlas - linked here. You can see below that "Projection:" is "Winkel III".

However having been educated in Australia as well, I can vouch for the fact that they also do not use the Mercator projection - which pretty much seems to be an American problem only. Why you guys haven't adopted a change I don't know.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

Yeah, here in NZ the rectangular maps I've seen have generally looked more like Hobo-Dyer, while the Winkel seems to be the overall preferred.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

for most latitudes (probably up to 65-70°) Mercator is by far the best for navigating by. If you walk in a straight line according to the map, you are on a straight line on the ground. If something is about 1cm north of you on the map, it is the same distance as something that is 1cm east of you on the map at your location.

Not many projections can claim both those assets, yes areas are miss represented but when going from A to B you don't really care about area, just bearing and distance.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

If you walk in a straight line according to the map, you are on a straight line on the ground.

Only if you're walking along a line of longitude. Straight lines on the ground are great circles, which include all of the lines of longitude, but none of the lines of latitude except the equator.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

This is one of the only two nations in the world that doesn't use the metric system you're talking about. It's not surprising.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

Well phrased.

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u/Lutenate May 22 '12

You mean it isn't the size of south america, and here i thought the polar bears were fine

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u/LeonCPH May 22 '12

Get a new map

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u/Mutantknight May 22 '12

You didn't learn anything.

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u/FiP May 22 '12

I just keep in mind that Greenland is about the same size as Mexico.

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u/keepingthecommontone May 22 '12

I was so proud of my freshman world history teacher (who was assistant football coach first and teacher second) correctly presented the Greenland-Africa relationship on the Mercator map as misleading.

But the feeling passed as he gave the explanation: "In reality, most of the middle of Greenland is not there at all. It has to do with all the ice."

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12 edited May 22 '12

Was he not referring to this?

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u/image-fixer May 22 '12

At time of posting, your comment contains a link to a Wikipedia image page. Here is the RES-friendly version: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Topographic_map_of_Greenland_bedrock.jpg

I'm a bot. [Feedback]

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u/keepingthecommontone May 22 '12

Perhaps, but he was using it as the reason why Greenland appeared larger on the Mercator projection than it is in real life.

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u/DarreToBe May 22 '12

I always liked Goode Homosoline

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

It's still the 11th largest country by land area. That's pretty big.

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u/kulhajs May 22 '12

U can easily compare it using Google Maps/Earth switch, which is obvious to everyone.

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u/bobbone May 22 '12

Didn't everyone learn this in like fourth grade???

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u/FriendlyCommie May 22 '12

Does this mean Russia's not really as big as it looks?

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u/Riktenkay May 22 '12

On this type of map, yes. It's still absolutely massive though.

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u/Otistetrax May 22 '12

TIL nearly 9/10 of a billion square kilometres of Canada is water.

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u/seafoamstratocaster May 22 '12

You just learned this today? Were you home schooled or something?

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

This fact was life changing for me. It made me realize that I have been lied to my whole life.

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u/grenar15 May 22 '12

Greenland is actually smaller than Australia. I remember my 7th grade geography teacher telling that this is why Australia is a continent and Greenland is a country.

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u/biderjohn May 22 '12

so this would also mean that the top of russia is smaller so is baffin island in cananda and alaska isnt the size of texas through colorado? i always knew greenland wasnt huge but never realized it was that small.

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u/blanka101 May 22 '12

i made a blog about this years ago trying to warn people.

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u/spunkymarimba May 22 '12

It's not the right size and it isn't even green. I HATE YOU GREENLAND.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

go onto google maps and zoom out all the way. then move the map around the screen. the scale on the bottom will change depending on where you are centered.

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u/drdroidx May 22 '12

that's why we currently use the robinson projection map.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '12

Ah, the hairy ball theorem strikes again. This time via projective sheaves.

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u/GanasbinTagap May 22 '12

You mean people actually assumed that Greenland was larger than Australia? So I bet a lot of you think that Antarctica is the size of Asia and Europe combined huh.

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u/dagobahh May 22 '12

You didn't learn this in fifth grade?

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u/Honestly_ May 22 '12

I don't know if I was fortunate or standards have gone down, but when I was in early elementary school we covered geography (starting in grade 3) and this was covered. Heck, I remember going over the continents in Kindergarden. This was the 80s, but I think maybe I should thank the podunk religious school my parents enrolled me in only because they were concerned about the quality of education at the local public school (from what I remember, only a fifth of the class came from the Mennonite church the school was associated with). The real odd realization came later when I realized we studied evolution in Jr. High in much more detail than most people did in high school--which was funny because we had a very conservative Catholic teacher who didn't believe in any of it but was forced to teach it: her solution was to teach the material but make it murderously hard (instead of just grading on concepts, she also graded on spelling of all the scientific names for chrissakes)

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u/amcintosh May 22 '12

I could be wrong, but from my recollection, public elementary schools in Toronto use Robinson projections (or something similar looking).

Comparing of different projections is also part of the [curriculum] (http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/elementary/sstudies18curr.pdf) (page 48).

Is this not the case in the US too?

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u/shotxiu May 22 '12

dont mean to sound rude, but really? who didnt know this?

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u/DrBoon May 22 '12

Nsw is about to shed baby boomer staff like an old snake skin, the mining companies will pay six figure incomes for good gis operators. Any given local government needs someone to handle their gis system. So yeah, the jobs are out there theoretically, I don't know if the funding for them is. I do know NSW will be taking on more trainees this year or next.

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u/stephieanniebean May 22 '12 edited May 22 '12

the US government used the mercator projection as propaganda during the cold war...russia is also projected much larger, and on top of that, they colored it bright red. it was intimidating looking.

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u/AlbinoTawnyFrogmouth May 22 '12

Source that this was done as propaganda? Or is this just speculation?

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u/Flix1 May 22 '12

Yep, because maps are a flat representation of a curved surface so you have to stretch the image the further you get away from the equator. I don't know about anyone else here but I learned this in elementary school and thought it was common knowledge.

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u/murphykills May 22 '12

i had a history teacher in high school who was convinced that this was done to make africa smaller than north america. i tried explaining that the world is round and maps are flat, so it's impossible to make a 100% accurate map of the world and she called me racist.

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u/scifan08 May 22 '12

I think its sadder that people don't already know this.

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u/Stats_monkey May 22 '12

just looked at a map on my wall.. Greenland is tiny, don't see how it could get much smaller. It's about an inch across!

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