7 ms·
Back in the early 90's (in the US) I had a friend who was a college student from China. In the common area of her dorm there was a huge wall-size Rand-McNally m
by marshray 11y ago
Back in the early 90's (in the US) I had a friend who was a college student from China. In the common area of her dorm there was a huge wall-size Rand-McNally map of the world. We were looking it over.
"There's China" I said. "And there's Taiwan."
"You know Taiwan is really not that big." she said.
"What do you mean?"
"Map makers show it larger than it really is in order to exaggerate its importance."
I was a little weirded out by that idea. This girl was pretty intelligent, she seemed to know some math and logical thinking. She was in the process of becoming a CPA.
For better or worse I responded with practical analysis: "How would that even work? You and I could go buy maps right now for navigating ships and airplanes, those would have to be accurate in order to function. We could compare them to this one and if they are noticeably different we could complain and the company that made the map would lose face. Why would Rand-McNally give a shit about the political importance of Taiwan anyway, enough to risk their own credibility?"
"They just do. All map makers do this."
She would not be convinced.
- jordanb 11y agoIsn't it odd that a bigger landmass confers more importance to her? I guess by her reckoning Russia is the most important country in the world, followed by Canada?
- marshray 11y agoNo, I don't think that's what she was saying at all.
- zurn 11y agoThey would be.. except Russia and Canada are shrunken on most world or US/Europe maps because of the distortion from the map projection. Yet another mapmakers conspiracy. (everything else that's far from the map center is of course also affected this way)
- kbart 11y agoMap making is hard. You can't transfer spherical world to a flat paper sheet/screen without distorting it in one way or another. There was an article not long ago here in HN about this problem: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/02/google-maps-gets-africa-wrong http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/02/google-maps-get...
- qq66 11y agoDoesn't the commonly used Mercator projection make polar regions seem larger than normal? Causing Greenland to seem enormous?
- zurn 11y agoShh!
- reddytowns 11y agoI asked my Taiwanese friend about this and she said when she was a kid, Taiwanese maps would have a larger Taiwan compared to China. She said it was to make Taiwan seem more important. So there is at least some truth to what she said
- c3534l 11y agoThat doesn't demonstrate there is truth to it, only that you found someone else who believed the absurdity.
- reddytowns 11y agoI found someone else who claimed to have seen maps of this type, and had no reason to lie as far as I know. Especially since she is Taiwanese, and it made her own country look a little silly.
- lionyo 11y agoCould she be referring to different map projections? https://xkcd.com/977/ https://xkcd.com/977/
- marshray 11y agoWell, I'm pretty sure it was a mercator projection, which would distort more-Northern mainland China even more larger relative to less-Northern Taiwan.
- wnevets 11y agoIt's not unprecedented for entire continents not having the correct size on a map. http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/cartography http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/cartograph... http://thetruesize.com/ http://thetruesize.com/
- empressplay 11y agoThat "true size" website is wildly inaccurate. I'm puzzled what the motivation is for that.
- yabun 11y agohttp://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Normal/ProjPoly/projPoly.html http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Normal/ProjPoly/projP... These maps aren't too bad.
- nflknfk 11y agoSimilar experience(s): I went to the University of Washington, at which an extremely high percentage of the students were Chinese (I want to say between 30% and 40%). Taiwan and the South China Sea are definite hotbutton issues. Once during an international relations lecture of about 200 people, the professor made the mistake of mentioning Taiwan which caused one of the Chinese students to stand up and begin talking very loudly (shouting?) at the professor for what must have been a good three minutes, informing him that Taiwan is not the real China. It was pretty painful to watch considering he was one of the most senior professors within that department, and very well versed on the subject. Then I also had a Chinese roommate freshman year and there were always oddities like "those people at Tiananmen had it coming." Lots of little things that added up over time.
- seanmcdirmid 11y agoUW has never had that high percentage of Chinese students; from the demographics report: http://www.washington.edu/omad/files/2015/02/2015-01-09-UW-State-of-Diversity.pdf http://www.washington.edu/omad/files/2015/02/2015-01-09-UW-S... So they (Asians, other) are at 21.5% in 2014/15. Note that international has its own separate slice, at 14.7%, that isn't broken down. So...that means all that 21.5% are American, possibly of Chinese descent, which is far away from Chinese nationals. UW is a commuter school, I think 75% of the students live at home even. So if you were living on campus, your view of the demographics would be a bit skewed. Incidentally, in 2013, UW admitted a class of 6,255, 687 of which were Chinese, roughly 10%, which still isn't shabby: http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/10/14/uw-fall-2013-enrollment-largest-freshman-class-ever/ http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/10/14/uw-fall-2013-enrol...
- nflknfk 11y agoWhat many of them do, including my former roommate, is to move over here during their sophomore or junior years of high school so they can achieve resident status in the state of Washington and get cheap college tuition. So going by those numbers you found, the true percentage is probably between 25% and 30%.
- jacquesm 11y agoIt's a nice example of how powerful media exposure is. Think of the persons brain as polluted by an influence solely geared towards making their brain an extension of a political apparatus to the point where they can no longer tell reality and polluted input apart. It is very hard to maintain objectivity in todays media rich world. You too probably have pollution like that in your head - and so do I - and just like this person we are unable to recognize it for what it is. Objectivity is very precious and extremely hard to find.
- anon4 11y agoJust as there are different degrees of wrong (the Earth is flat vs. the Earth is a sphere), there are different degrees of propaganda and varying severity of political indoctrination.
- yellowstuff 11y agoThanks. I feel like there should be a corollary to Godwin's Law: "If an online discussion mentions a problem in a non-US country, almost surely someone will point out that the US is not perfect, and is therefore just as bad as the other country."
- jacquesm 11y agoWhere did the US enter in to it?