Why all world maps are wrong

It’s very curious how there are areas of knowledge that are booming by business opportunities such as Artificial Intelligence or robotics; others that are reborn by the need to boost certain skills such as philosophy through critical thinking; and others that remain stuck in the past. This is the case with cartography.

Cartography (from the Greek chartēs = map and graphein = written) is the applied science that’s responsible for gathering, making and analyzing measurements and data from regions of the Earth, to graphically represent them with different linear dimensions — reduced scale. So far everything is clear, but did you know that all the maps we see are wrong? Take a look at this Vox video that explains it brilliantly.

Okay, maybe the title has a bit of marketing, but I’m not quite off track. I became interested in the world of maps thanks to Carto and his philosophy of “everything happens somewhere” to enhance the visualization of geolocalized data. I’ve always liked his approach, his clarity and his aesthetic taste. The fact is that the maps we are used to seeing are projections and specifically that one is called Mercator (by Gerardus Mercator) and is great for navigation because it keeps the direction (that’s why Google Maps uses it) but does not keep the proportion of countries.

Do you know the “The True Size” website? I recommend it for you to play and see the real size of each country / continent of the Mercator projection. Obviously there are other projections such as Gall-Peter or the Winkel Tripel, which is the one adopted by the National Geographic Society for its balance between the proportion of countries / continents and the distortion. Another really interesting webpage to see the different types of projections that exist is Mike Bostock’s Blocks profile: Projection Transition.

Still so much to learn…. Don’t you think?

#365daysof #futurism #innovation #maps #day148