Does anyone here remember in the 1990s when the Peters projection was suddenly being pushed by a huge PR campaign as being “more accurate” and “less discriminatory”?
There are several points to be made:
No flat map can accurately portray shape, area, direction, and distance all at the same time.
The Mercator projection, which is the map most of us are used to seeing, portrays directions at straight lines and reasonably preserves shape, but significantly distorts area the further that one gets from the equator
The Peters projection preserves relative area, but significantly distorts shape.
Compare both the Mercator and Peters maps to a globe and you’ll see that all this hoopla is really much ado about nothing.
Peters was assassinated in 1979 by eskimos from Greenland. His map lives on, but if you own one, the eskimos will hunt you down too. And they’ll burn your map.
What are you talking about? I can hardly even find Greenland on that map (the upside down rabbit ears?). Are you confusing Great Britain with Greenland?
I must say, I’m surprised to see Australia looking so ragged and scrawny.
According to the Wiki article on the subject you are right here too-- Australia’s per capita GDP at PPP
is about 30% greater than the EU average, and is virtually the same as Canada’s.
Completely agreed: every flat map makes some compromise. The point that the sociologist might have is that the decision of what gets compromised and what does not reveals something about what is important to the mapmaker and/or the user of the map. Maps represent what matters to the mapmaker at the expense of what does not.
For example, Mercator maps are evidence of the importance of European to New World sea routes to the mapmakers and users of the era that gave them birth. Relative land area … not so important. The poles … usually not so important. But when they are maps exist to emphasize accuracy for them.
Every map therefore reveals a bias. Just not the stupid conclusion implied by that blogger.
There will always be distortions of distance (and, equivalently, distortion of angles), but there are 100% accurate equal-area projections, the simplest being cylindrical equal-area projections, including Gall-Peters.
No flat map portrays distances accurately on even any tiny part of the planet. For example, on any tiny region of any flat map, you can tile 6 equilateral triangles into a hexagon. You cannot do this on a globe, at any scale.
Greenland? Where? I think you are confusing the U.K. with Greenland, which is one of those little specks to the northeast of Canada, which makes sense since Greenland’s GDP is less than $2 billion (although at $36,500 per capita, and in 2008/9 dollars, while the map uses 2000 dollars, but probably not much different, as the square in the lower right is $100 billion per that area).
I think there is a valid issue here because of how common the Mercator projection is, I just asked 3 people today what size Africa is and they all said the same size as the USA or around that!
I myself never realized just how large Africa was, I knew it was distorted on Mercator but my gode the distortion is amazing! It makes me wonder about the rest of the world, Africa gets the press but what other countries are totally warped in my mind because of that damn Mercator?! It is worrying.
Even on the mercator projection Africa is noticeably larger than the US, unless the person thinks that all of north America (US, Canada and a large chunk of Mexico) is the US.
