I assume it's my colorblindness, but on mobile when I move that slider back and forth I just see blue outlines appear around the countries with no other distinguishable changes.
Different projections have different uses. There's no one "correct" projection and anyway I've seen plenty of world maps using projections other than Mercator for quite a number of years now.
This is a very weird sounding pretense. Why does it matter if Africa in particular is bigger on the map compared to other countries and continents? How does area matter in general? It's not like we can infer anything useful from area comparisons. Also the map that is proposed (with the kinda-oval shape) is a map that I've seen a lot in school right next to now more common Mercator, and I'm from now here close to Africa.
Everyone knows Greenland is the real proponent of the Mercator projection. Using the unfair influence of their massive perceived size on the map to unfairly inflate their importance in global politics and economics. It's time to put Greenland back in its place.
All of the maps are awful at a global levels. If you fix one problem another comes up.
I am be surprised at the number of maps we look at today given that often we are looking at digital screens that could display an interactive globe as easily as a distorted old map.
Every 2D projection of a 3D surface will be wrong in some way. It's just a matter of which attributes you want yo compromise on and which you want to be accurate.
As I understand it, Mercator mostly preserves relative distances between continents, at the expense of distorting continent shape & size. This is useful for ocean-based trade route calculation, which was a major concern when Mercator was introduced.
Most regions these days have a standard projection they use that best represents their country and modern GIS software can trivially reproject data in whatever format your project is using.
For example, in NZ, New Zealand Transverse Mercator is normally used. We used to use New Zealand Map Grid, which better represents our country, but the govt decided to switch the official one to better integrate with overseas data & software. Modern software allows you to trivially use either though.
Tl;Dr: map projections matter, but different ones are better for different purposes in different places. The African Union can use whatever they want, and everyone else can use what is most useful for their maps. No need for everyone to use the same system when we can use both.
This sort of strident campaigning language is such an unhelpful framing in which to discuss the relative merits of different map projections.
Every world map must trade off between different types of distortion. There's no principled reason to demand a map perfectly respect relative area at the expense of other characteristics.
Personally for general world maps I typically prefer so-called ‘compromise’ pseudocylindrical projections such as Robinson, which try to minimise all types of distortion as much as possible, but even the much-maligned Mercator has its place.
I like the idea of questioning status quo, but not so sure this makes a whole lot of sense in 2025.
Meerkartor was developed to project a 3D GLOBE onto a flat surface.
We already have non-meerkartor projections such as the classic globe that should be found in every class-room, and modern digital variations such as Google Earth.
And the meerkartor projections we do use:
In USA, the meerkartor projection centers on the USA.
In europe, the meerkartor projection centers on Europe.
And in asia, guess where the center is?
Why can't Africa just start using their own projection too, with their preferences?
We also need to decolonize contimental US! All white men must leave occupied land, and go to reserves in desert! Rest of the country will finaly live in harmony and socialism!
Is there a single argument in favor of this claim that is backed up in the references on this site? It doesn't look like it to me. The only secondary citation is on a website that is down and doesn't seem to be peer reviewed.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 31.7 ms ] threadhttps://xkcd.com/977/
I am be surprised at the number of maps we look at today given that often we are looking at digital screens that could display an interactive globe as easily as a distorted old map.
As I understand it, Mercator mostly preserves relative distances between continents, at the expense of distorting continent shape & size. This is useful for ocean-based trade route calculation, which was a major concern when Mercator was introduced.
Most regions these days have a standard projection they use that best represents their country and modern GIS software can trivially reproject data in whatever format your project is using.
For example, in NZ, New Zealand Transverse Mercator is normally used. We used to use New Zealand Map Grid, which better represents our country, but the govt decided to switch the official one to better integrate with overseas data & software. Modern software allows you to trivially use either though.
Tl;Dr: map projections matter, but different ones are better for different purposes in different places. The African Union can use whatever they want, and everyone else can use what is most useful for their maps. No need for everyone to use the same system when we can use both.
Every world map must trade off between different types of distortion. There's no principled reason to demand a map perfectly respect relative area at the expense of other characteristics.
Personally for general world maps I typically prefer so-called ‘compromise’ pseudocylindrical projections such as Robinson, which try to minimise all types of distortion as much as possible, but even the much-maligned Mercator has its place.
Meerkartor was developed to project a 3D GLOBE onto a flat surface.
We already have non-meerkartor projections such as the classic globe that should be found in every class-room, and modern digital variations such as Google Earth.
And the meerkartor projections we do use:
In USA, the meerkartor projection centers on the USA.
In europe, the meerkartor projection centers on Europe.
And in asia, guess where the center is?
Why can't Africa just start using their own projection too, with their preferences?
And you can definitely do that because a large proportion of maps sold in Asia do actually have Asia more or less in the middle.