In other news, look how many continents can fit in the ocean. See how many moons can fit in the earth. Lots of smaller things can fit in larger things!
While I appreciate the tongue in cheek nature of your comment, keep in mind the vast majority of people don't realize how bonkers the Mercator projection makes the world out to be.
I do these kind of comparisons all the time myself (particularly distances) - I just tend to react that assertions that Europe is "small" which I think are based on the distribution of "interesting" bits within Europe and the US. In Europe a lot of the "interesting" bits cluster together in the middle with a lot of empty bits towards the edges - the US has the opposite layout with major attractions often being on the coasts and the middle getting relatively little attention.
[NB Note the sweeping generalisations - I know fine well that there is a lot of cool stuff in the "middle" of the USA as well as lots of fascinating stuff round the periphery of Europe - I'm from Scotland!]
My brother's father-in-law, while lecturing me how we younglings don't know nothing and have terrible education, insisted that Iran is in Africa and full of arabs.
Because most people have no idea that Africa is as large as it is due to the way we represent our planet's maps and globes.
Seriously have this conversation several times a year. People really think Greenland is almost as large as Africa. I than state that we can fit these countries into the area of Africa and people are shocked.
BTW US is the third largest geographical country in the world.
I remember learning in school (here in the US) that the Sahara Desert is by itself as large as the continental US. That fact was so striking to me when I learned it, I wonder why other people don't know it.
While we’re talking about map projections, I’ve long been partial to Cahill’s octahedral maps. Gene Keyes has some derivatives and a comprehensive website about the subject. http://www.genekeyes.com/B.J.S._CAHILL_RESOURCE.html
I’ve recently been trying to make some better Cahill spinoffs of my own. Here’s a conformal version:
http://i.imgur.com/RhZL1FN.jpg
Thanks for the link. But I don't know that I would call Scientific American a blog. Personally I think SciAm's version of the graphic gets the point across better, since it shows the curvature.
They don't have the baggage of all the atrocities of the past, they aren't overtly racist on principle, and they have no qualms taking advantage or the situation and participating in the corruption and exploitation. How is that surprising?
While all you say is true, don't forget that by doing this China is slowly building itself a reputation for UN votes. A major goal is to enter the permanent council and/or preventing Japan from having one.
That is incorrect. The word 'China' after WWII referred to what is now called Taiwan. Nixon eventually normalized relations with mainland China and arranged for Taiwan's seat to be swapped for the mainland Chinese.
That is incorrect. The PRC (People's Republic of China) came into being in 1949. The UN was founded in 1945. That's a 4 year difference. At the time, there was only one China and the government that signed the treaty was the same as the one that was eventually exiled into Taiwan.
You're assuming the ROC actually controlled mainland China in its entirety. The only reason it took so long for them to be forced out was the Japanese starting the Pacific theatre of WWII. You can't really fight a civil war and expect to fight another empire at the same time.
The temporary halt to the power struggle over mainland China was just a self preservation tactic on the part of both parties.
Are you saying that because you have some sort of evidence of their highly egalitarian nature, or because "They aren't Americans/Western Europeans, therefore they can't possibly be racist."?
If it's the former, I've heard an awful lot of complaints from non-Han in China about racism, and I'd be curious how you reconcile that with your statement.
This is ignorant of both history and the present. Speaking as a three year resident of China they are a hell of a lot more racist than is common in the West. The only reason China doesn't have atrocity baggage in Africa is that they didn't have the opportunity. The Qing were all about genocide when it was useful. I'd say ask the Oirat or the Dzhungars except these groups no longer exist.
One thing I noticed from looking over the above wikipedia comparison is that a lot of the land mass is probably uninhabitable, and it made me wonder how much is uninhabitable when comparing land-masses. The closest thing I could find was a chart of currently uninhabited regions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_uninhabited_regions
I think it's nice to educate people about map projections and that the earth is not a flat map, but area hardly is a measurement that dwarfs things in any other way than numbers. In economic terms it matters how many people that land can support, either trough agriculture or it's natural resources.
If it's just about area, the Pacific Ocean alone would dwarf all land masses all-together.
In general this approach of raising awareness to regions leaves a lot to question, especially if it's mixed with a humanitarian tone:
Understanding Africa's immense size helps us appreciate how difficult it may be to solve the continent's poverty and drought problems
To answer that: No, just no. As said, it might help raise initial awareness, but that's about it.
Poverty is not a function of land area, just to name Bangladesh or Canada.
Alternatively one might point out, that Nigeria's current population alone is already on par with that of half of the USA's at a 10th of its area (~1⅓ of Texas).
Population might be a more cogent variable. E.g. Alaskans brag that if Texas doesn't curb its arrogance, Alaska will split in two and then Texas will be the THIRD largest state.
Long time ago, back in 1992, Kai Krause was famous in desktop publishing for his software "Kai's Power Tools" - a set of plugins for Adobe Photoshop. Kai is one of the designers of this map.
Like most "big countries" or continents in this case, most of the land is useless and unlivable. We're talking 7% arable land in sub Saharan Africa. So you have all this landmass but only a tiny bit is usable.
We often see these maps with Russia or Canada or Australia, but the reality is very little of land is usable. Large countries that effectively use their land, have roads to every part, have significant settlements in every region, etc are rare. The USA comes to mind. China would qualify if they didn't annex Tibet and didn't leave the whole western side of their country largely undeveloped.
Size, while interesting to look at on a map, is a kinda useless metric. For example, Japan is smaller than California, but its one of the world's cultural and economic powerhouses. Or South Korea, which would fit between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
"Some economists have talked about the 'scourge of raw materials', large quantities of rare raw materials putting Africa under heavy pressures and tensions, leading to wars and slow development. Despite these abundance of natural resources, claims suggest that many Western nations like the United States, Canada, France and the United Kingdom as well as emerging economic powerhouses like China often exploit Africa's natural resources today, causing most of the value and money from the natural resources to go to the West and East Asia rather than Africa, further causing the poverty in Africa."
What's your source? Having lived for over a decade in southern Africa, I find that somewhat hard to believe...
If you say that only 7% is being used for farming, then yes, that might be accurate - the population density is way lower than, say, Europe. But I'm pretty sure a whole lot more than that is potentially usable.
I really dislike the article saying that "On a flat map of the world, Greenland appears as big as Africa". That is utter bullshit. Yes, it says "most prevalent flat maps" in the subtitle but even that seems not based on anything but agenda. Mercator is often used today with online maps because people (especially journalists) just love Google Maps (which uses Web Mercator by default) and seem incapable of learning about alternatives or just map projections.
Yes, the projection can be a problem and yes, this is a fun way illustrating it but please go the extra mile and do it scientifically as your name suggests. What projection was used for this example? Is the 3D actually geodetically correct or did another oblivious artist scale and move things so they look nice?
Somewhat interesting that Kai decided to include only the contiguous U.S., on a map about visualizing the true size of various land masses.
I poked around for a minute, and it turns out Alaska and Hawaii combine to have the same surface area as Spain, France, Italy, Germany, the U.K., Ireland, the Netherlands, and Belgium combined.
Great illustration, but it's sorta blogspam so here's a reliable alternative (it compresses the y-axis to achieve equal area). Or you know, use a globe or google earth.
Awful blogspam devoid of any original thought. Besides, it is obvious, looking at the provided Mercator map, that Africa is at least twice the size of US and China, so the argument that Mercator somehow makes Africa appear much smaller is clearly bullshit. The only areas that Mercator distorts significantly are polar regions. You would have a point comparing Canada with Africa on Mercator map. However the US and China are close enough to equator that the area distortion is not very significant. The fact that a trash article like this already got 100 points makes me lose faith in this community.
The US is between the 30th and 45th parallel north. South Africa lies on the 30th parallel south. There is massive distortion between the sizes of the US and Africa on a Mercator map.
edit - are you looking at the right line for the equator?
Except the distortion is clearly not massive if you look at the map and the actual size comparison on the globe, I don't know why you keep saying that. Check the math here [1]. You would see that the latitudes where US and China are located are not massively distorted, even if you don't trust your own eyes. The whole "Mercator map is used (or was made) so that US appears larger than it is" is such bullshit that it boggles my mind that anyone seriously believes it.
Mercator is for navigation, it has nothing to do with wanting to make some countries larger than others, it merely lets you chart courses easier and that was more important than preserving scale.
From your link the contiguous US would appear to be represented at ~ 1.7 times larger scale than the continent of Africa, on average. If I am comparing area and something is generally over 1.5 times bigger than it should be, that is a massive distortion, other more massive distortions notwithstanding.
edited to add -
I don't think the article or anyone in particular is trying to claim that the Mercator projection was created or used to make the US look larger, I mean, the map predates the USA by over 200 years.
People are trying to discourage it because it is a distortion that is only really of use to people navigating the sea in boats using paper charts.
>From your link the contiguous US would appear to be represented at ~ 1.7 times larger scale than the continent of Africa, on average.
Look at this chart in particular: http://i.stack.imgur.com/Y9ilC.png
1.7 larger is nowhere to be found. The very north of continental US compared to equator is below 1.5. If you consider that Africa extends north and south of equator and US south of 45th, the magnification is much smaller. Moreover consider that we're comparing areas instead of lengths, so visually the extent of magnification is even less apparent. You keep repeating the word "massive distortion", but it simply doesn't apply to the latitudes of continental US. This is very easy to check if you have a globe and a Mercator map. And yet the myth persists...
>People are trying to discourage it because it is a distortion that is only really of use to people navigating the sea in boats using paper charts.
That is patently false. Mercator has many very useful properties, such as local conformality which is why Google Maps and other maps providers use it. It is, in fact, the only cylindrical map projection with local conformality. Which is very useful for generating map tiles.
Oh, come on, people. Projecting is a pun, and the article is obviously political. Grow a sense of humor. Downvoters: if you want to see an asshole, find a mirror.
83 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 143 ms ] threadEdit: My favourite being an, apparently serious, assertion by an HN user than Europe would fit in Texas... :-)
http://www.texasmonthly.com/daily-post/how-big-texas-compare...
the last line might help people understand why people compare these things:
"If you’re the right kind of nerd, you can probably do this forever and not get bored"
[NB Note the sweeping generalisations - I know fine well that there is a lot of cool stuff in the "middle" of the USA as well as lots of fascinating stuff round the periphery of Europe - I'm from Scotland!]
My brother's father-in-law, while lecturing me how we younglings don't know nothing and have terrible education, insisted that Iran is in Africa and full of arabs.
Seriously have this conversation several times a year. People really think Greenland is almost as large as Africa. I than state that we can fit these countries into the area of Africa and people are shocked.
BTW US is the third largest geographical country in the world.
I think it works to show how big Africa is.
But yes, if you compare countries, you can take comparisons further, and it would be more practical.
I’ve recently been trying to make some better Cahill spinoffs of my own. Here’s a conformal version: http://i.imgur.com/RhZL1FN.jpg
I found the Cahill projection a few years ago and was disappointed that I couldn't seem to find one in print.
The one I found that seem to resemble it is the Waterman projection which is also available in printed versions.
Spend a month or two reading the appropriate books about cartography, complex analysis, and approximation theory, and then write some Matlab code. :-)
http://thediplomat.com/2015/01/china-embracing-africa-but-no...
http://qz.com/217597/how-a-million-chinese-migrants-are-buil...
(that third article is probably the most interesting)
The temporary halt to the power struggle over mainland China was just a self preservation tactic on the part of both parties.
Are you saying that because you have some sort of evidence of their highly egalitarian nature, or because "They aren't Americans/Western Europeans, therefore they can't possibly be racist."?
If it's the former, I've heard an awful lot of complaints from non-Han in China about racism, and I'd be curious how you reconcile that with your statement.
If you want to see Chinese Ming architecture, visit Korea.
If you want to see Chinese Qing architecture, visit Beijing.
If you want to see contemporary Chinese architecture, visit Africa ;-)
He comes across as a very ambitious guy and he seemingly has a plan (to use his children to get more "local" offspring)
One thing I noticed from looking over the above wikipedia comparison is that a lot of the land mass is probably uninhabitable, and it made me wonder how much is uninhabitable when comparing land-masses. The closest thing I could find was a chart of currently uninhabited regions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_uninhabited_regions
If it's just about area, the Pacific Ocean alone would dwarf all land masses all-together.
In general this approach of raising awareness to regions leaves a lot to question, especially if it's mixed with a humanitarian tone:
Understanding Africa's immense size helps us appreciate how difficult it may be to solve the continent's poverty and drought problems
To answer that: No, just no. As said, it might help raise initial awareness, but that's about it. Poverty is not a function of land area, just to name Bangladesh or Canada.
Alternatively one might point out, that Nigeria's current population alone is already on par with that of half of the USA's at a 10th of its area (~1⅓ of Texas).
Some population density maps:
Africa: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v1/n1/fig_tab/nclimat...
http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/downloads/maps/nagdc/nagdc-...
Global: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/03/age-of-man/map-int...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1Zm6HzN5YVI
A nice way to get a feel for the distortions.
Edit (spoiler): it's actually in Asia :)
We often see these maps with Russia or Canada or Australia, but the reality is very little of land is usable. Large countries that effectively use their land, have roads to every part, have significant settlements in every region, etc are rare. The USA comes to mind. China would qualify if they didn't annex Tibet and didn't leave the whole western side of their country largely undeveloped.
Size, while interesting to look at on a map, is a kinda useless metric. For example, Japan is smaller than California, but its one of the world's cultural and economic powerhouses. Or South Korea, which would fit between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
"Some economists have talked about the 'scourge of raw materials', large quantities of rare raw materials putting Africa under heavy pressures and tensions, leading to wars and slow development. Despite these abundance of natural resources, claims suggest that many Western nations like the United States, Canada, France and the United Kingdom as well as emerging economic powerhouses like China often exploit Africa's natural resources today, causing most of the value and money from the natural resources to go to the West and East Asia rather than Africa, further causing the poverty in Africa."
If you say that only 7% is being used for farming, then yes, that might be accurate - the population density is way lower than, say, Europe. But I'm pretty sure a whole lot more than that is potentially usable.
I really dislike the article saying that "On a flat map of the world, Greenland appears as big as Africa". That is utter bullshit. Yes, it says "most prevalent flat maps" in the subtitle but even that seems not based on anything but agenda. Mercator is often used today with online maps because people (especially journalists) just love Google Maps (which uses Web Mercator by default) and seem incapable of learning about alternatives or just map projections.
Yes, the projection can be a problem and yes, this is a fun way illustrating it but please go the extra mile and do it scientifically as your name suggests. What projection was used for this example? Is the 3D actually geodetically correct or did another oblivious artist scale and move things so they look nice?
I poked around for a minute, and it turns out Alaska and Hawaii combine to have the same surface area as Spain, France, Italy, Germany, the U.K., Ireland, the Netherlands, and Belgium combined.
Lambert equal area projection: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Lambert-...
obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/977/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVX-PrBRtTY
http://www.marybakereddylibrary.org/project/mapparium/
edit - are you looking at the right line for the equator?
[1] http://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/110730/mercator-scale...
From your link the contiguous US would appear to be represented at ~ 1.7 times larger scale than the continent of Africa, on average. If I am comparing area and something is generally over 1.5 times bigger than it should be, that is a massive distortion, other more massive distortions notwithstanding.
edited to add -
I don't think the article or anyone in particular is trying to claim that the Mercator projection was created or used to make the US look larger, I mean, the map predates the USA by over 200 years.
People are trying to discourage it because it is a distortion that is only really of use to people navigating the sea in boats using paper charts.
Look at this chart in particular: http://i.stack.imgur.com/Y9ilC.png 1.7 larger is nowhere to be found. The very north of continental US compared to equator is below 1.5. If you consider that Africa extends north and south of equator and US south of 45th, the magnification is much smaller. Moreover consider that we're comparing areas instead of lengths, so visually the extent of magnification is even less apparent. You keep repeating the word "massive distortion", but it simply doesn't apply to the latitudes of continental US. This is very easy to check if you have a globe and a Mercator map. And yet the myth persists...
>People are trying to discourage it because it is a distortion that is only really of use to people navigating the sea in boats using paper charts.
That is patently false. Mercator has many very useful properties, such as local conformality which is why Google Maps and other maps providers use it. It is, in fact, the only cylindrical map projection with local conformality. Which is very useful for generating map tiles.
Didn't anyone ever see a globe when they were a kid?