3 ms·

More Accurate World Map Wins Prestigious Design Award (2016)

19 points by craigds 9y ago

gfiorav 9y ago
I can't get over how wrong my idea of Brazil's shape was.
- lysium 9y ago
  That is a distortion, I think. Look at the longitude and latitude lines in the sea.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    It looks as if this map generally is designed to localize the inevitable shape distortions to areas where there isn't "interesting" detail and therefore those distortions aren't as obvious. But because of the way Brazil sticks out, it ended up getting stretched a fair bit.
- Normal_gaussian 9y ago
  https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@-17.0240988,-56.5103846,9434934m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@-17.0240988,-56.5103846,94349...
- notatoad 9y ago
  That was my first reaction, until i remembered that i've seen a globe before, and my general perception of the shapes of countries is informed by a globe and not just the mercator projection. This map might bill itself as "the most accurate", but it's still making some crazy distortions. Mercator might get some sizes wrong, but it gets the shapes mostly right.
lysium 9y ago
I'm wondering how the map looks with the States or Europe in the center. Of course, the Japanese creator has Japan in the centre... :-)
PLenz 9y ago
Ugh, it's not more accurate, hell accurate don't even mean anything here. This is just a projection that makes different compromises making a pseudo sphere fit on to a plane. Projections are tools, different ones have different uses.
- ben11kehoe 9y ago
  It's also more or less equivalent to the Dymaxion map but stretches instead of disconnecting, which is a bit misleading, I think. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
merricksb 9y ago
Discussed 10 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12821637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12821637
torgoguys 9y ago
I'd argue with the "most accurate" designation the article uses. There are lots of projections out there. Use the one that best optimizes for the things you care about. This projection is neat, but has its own obvious tradeoffs (e.g., difficult to readily see how some landmasses relate to each other spacially. Antarctica in particular).
- Xoros 9y ago
  For example, the Japan is in the center. So it has this bias every world map has. "We are the center of the world"
hedgew 9y ago
I got curious and had to check the numbers, just to know what's real: Australia: 7.7 million km² United States: 9.8 million km² Europe: 10.2 million km² Russia: 17.1 million km² Africa: 30.37 million km²
knz 9y ago
This is interesting and I understand how every map is a compromise but it really bothers me how distant this projection makes Antarctica look from New Zealand (one of the gateway countries to the continent, especially the Ross Ice Shelf area).

19 points by craigds 9y ago

gfiorav 9y ago

I can't get over how wrong my idea of Brazil's shape was.

lysium 9y ago
That is a distortion, I think. Look at the longitude and latitude lines in the sea.
- ghaff 9y ago
  It looks as if this map generally is designed to localize the inevitable shape distortions to areas where there isn't "interesting" detail and therefore those distortions aren't as obvious. But because of the way Brazil sticks out, it ended up getting stretched a fair bit.
Normal_gaussian 9y ago
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@-17.0240988,-56.5103846,9434934m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@-17.0240988,-56.5103846,94349...
notatoad 9y ago
That was my first reaction, until i remembered that i've seen a globe before, and my general perception of the shapes of countries is informed by a globe and not just the mercator projection. This map might bill itself as "the most accurate", but it's still making some crazy distortions. Mercator might get some sizes wrong, but it gets the shapes mostly right.

lysium 9y ago

I'm wondering how the map looks with the States or Europe in the center. Of course, the Japanese creator has Japan in the centre... :-)

PLenz 9y ago

Ugh, it's not more accurate, hell accurate don't even mean anything here. This is just a projection that makes different compromises making a pseudo sphere fit on to a plane. Projections are tools, different ones have different uses.

ben11kehoe 9y ago
It's also more or less equivalent to the Dymaxion map but stretches instead of disconnecting, which is a bit misleading, I think. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

merricksb 9y ago

Discussed 10 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12821637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12821637

torgoguys 9y ago

I'd argue with the "most accurate" designation the article uses. There are lots of projections out there. Use the one that best optimizes for the things you care about. This projection is neat, but has its own obvious tradeoffs (e.g., difficult to readily see how some landmasses relate to each other spacially. Antarctica in particular).

Xoros 9y ago
For example, the Japan is in the center. So it has this bias every world map has. "We are the center of the world"

hedgew 9y ago

I got curious and had to check the numbers, just to know what's real: Australia: 7.7 million km² United States: 9.8 million km² Europe: 10.2 million km² Russia: 17.1 million km² Africa: 30.37 million km²

knz 9y ago

This is interesting and I understand how every map is a compromise but it really bothers me how distant this projection makes Antarctica look from New Zealand (one of the gateway countries to the continent, especially the Ross Ice Shelf area).