23 ms·
The True Size of Africa (2015)
- bombcar 5y agoIt’s only 6m sq km more than North America - but a major significant part of that is Canada.
- idatum 5y agoProjections can be tricky. Early memory I have in college: I walked into my professor's office and she had a curious looking map on her wall. It had Australia at the center and the US was distorted and upside down. As someone from North America (US) this was a nice lesson in perspective.
- aksss 5y agoSo too with a polar view of the planet: https://www.grida.no/resources/7845 https://www.grida.no/resources/7845
- sandworm101 5y agoShh. We arent supposed to talk about those maps. The earth is officially round.
- xpe 5y agoYes, I think more than one Australian professor have a similar map on display. :)
- robocat 5y agoA good page of examples with xcellent historical background: https://www.flourish.org/upsidedownmap/ https://www.flourish.org/upsidedownmap/
- mikestew 5y agoThe edited title is incorrect, in that it is a comparison with countries. How big is Africa compared to Asia? Okay, there’s one comparison with Europe (scroll down). Otherwise it’s a matter of how many countries one could cram in there. Of course, Africa already has a bunch of countries, so I guess I just didn’t get it. Comparing to, say, North America or something would be a better visualization for me.
- darkwater 5y ago> A veritable shitstorm of responses latched onto the tiniest of tiny details. People complained “you missed Ibiza”, “how could you make Belgium the same color as the Netherlands” “and on and on and on...
- joe_the_user 5y agoNo, the parent makes a good point that stacking countries insides different continents doesn't give one much of a comparison. The visualization winds-up more "factoid" than fact. Africa is approximately three times the size of Europe, 2/3 the size of Asia, 5/4 the size of North America and so forth. Obviously it's a large place but so is every continent. Edit: This isn't to take away from the point that historically, the size, importance, history and so forth of Africa have been neglected. But it seems like this should be dealt with more holistically than the infographic size comparison approach. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent#Area_and_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent#Area_and_population
- dleslie 5y agoThe importance of Africa was historically neglected? I don't think that fits well with the "Race for Africa" and the long history of Mediterranean conflicts involving North Africa. Africa wouldn't still be recovering from the effects of colonialism if it weren't as historically important as it was.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Turing_Machine 5y agoThe fact that countries and continents are two different things is not a "tiny detail". If you're comparing continents, Asia is larger than Africa, and North America is nearly as large. If you're comparing countries, the largest African country is Algeria, which ranks 10th.
- 5y ago
- edem 5y agoIf you find this fascinating try the intractive version! https://thetruesize.com/ https://thetruesize.com/
- jalgos_eminator 5y agoWow, this is a great visualization tool because it corrects for the distortions of flat maps. Greenland is always so huge on maps, but really its only a bit bigger than Mexico. For people trying the website out, you can type in the country then drag it around the world and it will change size based on latitude (because of flat map distortion), but you can also left click on the country, then turn it by clicking and holding on the compass in the lower left. You can also change the colors by double clicking the county.
- zokier 5y ago> Greenland is always so huge on maps Not quite always. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-area_map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-area_map
- prestigious 5y agoIt’s interesting as I always thought Africa is over populated but then if the whole of France was the Sahara it would be over populated as well.
- raldi 5y agoIt says "United States with Alaska & Hawaii" but I don't see them anywhere.
- aksss 5y agoRight, HI is probably not material, but considering AK is 1/4 the size of the contiguous US, that’s pretty substantial.
- jobigoud 5y agoIt's not on the map but it's included in the figure they used to add all these countries together to compare with the size of Africa.
- bombcar 5y agoI guess it fits in all the cracks.
- Nition 5y ago> "The table at right shows the US including Alaska and Hawaii, btw. And while not listing Eastern Europe (dark blue in the map) it adds many others unused in the map: Mexico, Peru, New Guinea, New Zealand, Nepal and Bangladesh!"
- dominicjj 5y agoI remember flying to Munich once from Cape Town and a German colleague guessed the flight was three to four hours. I said no, it was over eleven hours and he was shocked. I laughed and told him to check out a globe sometime - not a map - so he could trace for himself how massive Africa really is. The surface area of the moon is only 20% larger.
- coyotespike 5y agowhoa, now there's a statistic for you!
- bombcar 5y agoAsia is 17.21 million mi² - and the moon is 14.6 million mi².
- wolfram74 5y agoAnd, according to a very literal reading of 1917 Catholic law, under the jurisdiction of the diocese of orlando. https://aleteia.org/2018/08/03/yes-the-moon-has-its-own-catholic-bishop/ https://aleteia.org/2018/08/03/yes-the-moon-has-its-own-cath... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_Diocese_of_Orlando#Notes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_Diocese_of_Orla...
- mgerullis 5y agoHa, in 3-4 hours you may be in Cairo at best
- jlos 5y agoWhy isn't Canada or Russia, the two largest countries by land mass, included?
- witherk 5y agoProbably because it's trying to convince you that Africa is really huge, so including other really big countries would be counterproductive. I guess you could argue that Canada and Russia both have a lot of tundra that no one wants to live on so that land doesn't count or something.
- bombcar 5y agoI've not drawn up the maps, but it appears that North America is just a bit larger than the USA, Canada, and Mexico combined. That's large!
- sandworm101 5y agoCanada is tricky because of all the islands in the north. It isnt a solid blob. Russia is tricky becuase it is so long. I dont think it and the US would nest nicely inside the africa outline. And we cannot ever have a map without thr USA center stage. Also with russia, exactly which boarder should we use? It's probably better to just not enter into that debate.
- samatman 5y ago> Also with russia, exactly which boarder should we use? I assure you no one was thinking about that. They would just take whatever they got from punching "Russia" into the GIS database.
- jandrewrogers 5y agoThey also excluded Alaska from the United States, which would increase the size by >20%. I also understand why they didn't; the purpose isn't a rigorous measure of country size or anything like that.
- 5y ago
- kossTKR 5y agohttps://thetruesize.com/ https://thetruesize.com/ is a way better interactive version.
- mxfh 5y agoBut this is by Kai’s Power GOO Kai Krause. Doesn't get more random than this, if the most prevalent output of his getting passed around these days is this comperative map. For those who don't know his software, this was quite remarkable UI and graphics software more than 20 years ago. https://www.mprove.de/script/99/kai/index.html https://www.mprove.de/script/99/kai/index.html
- stoolpigeon 5y agoOne of the strangest feelings I've had is flying from Amsterdam to Johannesburg. It's a super long trip and so mentally I was expecting jet lag. But there was no time change. The season flipped but the time of day was right in sync with everyone back home in Budapest.
- jobigoud 5y agoThat's exactly why it's one of my favorite destinations. Take off in European winter in the evening, land in summer in the morning, no jet lag, beautiful landscapes, it's awesome.
- dialogbox 5y agoThat's also exactly same when I fly from Seoul to Sydney. 1 or 2 hours differences depending on daylight saving but it's actually nothing.
- jedberg 5y agoI traveled from San Francisco to Johannesburg. It was two flights, one to Berlin and then on to Johannesburg. The first flight gave us the usual jet lag going to Europe. The problem was our flight from Berlin to Johannesburg left in Berlin’s evening. It’s an 11 hour flight so the idea is that you sleep on the plane and arrive in the morning after 8 hours of sleep. But that only works if your body is already in GMT+1! So while everyone else slept the whole way, we were wide awake! I took pictures of the navigation display the moment we crossed the equator. But man was I messed up when I arrived. 11 hours on a plane and no time change is just so strange.
- stoolpigeon 5y agoThe two times I've been to SA it was for conferences and normally they had been held in Asia. It was a completely different experience going into them without some pretty heavy jet lag. Everything was better. And I could see how it impacted the people who had come from farther east or west. It was super interesting to see it play out. I don't know where we would have met this year - the pandemic took care of that.
- praptak 5y agoAfrica has so much sand that it could cover the whole Sahara desert and then some.
- dragonwriter 5y agoWhy is the subtitle “a visual comparison with other continents” here? It’s not in the source, and the source does not compare Africa visually to other continents (except that one of the smaller visualizations conpares it to Europe), but to individual countries.
- ohyeshedid 5y agoI share the same read. It's very much an apples to oranges comparison.
- _Microft 5y ago"Kai Krause" is the one of "Kai's Power Tools" ("KPT") and "Bryce" fame by the way. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai_Krause https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai_Krause
- nfoz 5y agoWow! Thanks for the heads up. Those were some of my favourite softwares. Inspired design.
- kingsuper20 5y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXqKkYYALMU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXqKkYYALMU
- init 5y agoAfrica has 54 countries, thousands of languages and 1.2 billion people. As an African, whenever I see this map I'm more astonished by how densely populated Europe and India are, how big and populated China is and how homogeneous the US is compared to its size.
- jahnu 5y agoPopulation density of Europe is 34/km2 Africa is 45/km2 https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/europe-population/#:~:text=Europe%20ranks%20number%203%20among,87%20people%20per%20mi2 https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/europe-popula...). https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/africa-population/#:~:text=Africa%20Population%20(LIVE)&text=The%20population%20density%20in%20Africa,117%20people%20per%20mi2).&text=The%20median%20age%20in%20Africa%20is%2019.7years https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/africa-popula....
- Retric 5y agoThat really depends on where you draw the borders on Europe. The population density of the EU is 105 people per km2. Include some or all of Russia and things look rather different. Similarly, Finland is 8% of the EU’s land area but only has 16.3 people per km2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_European_U...
- samatman 5y agoThat has to be including all of Russia as part of "Eastern Europe" (indeed, if you drill down into the data, that's what's happening). When we're talking about geography, you can't include anything east of the Urals in the European subcontinent.
- otabdeveloper4 5y agoThe Urals as a border is purely political and historical in nature. It has no particular geographic significance.
- axguscbklp 5y agoThis reminds me of reading about Africa's size in the introduction to Michael Crichton's Congo back when I was a kid: "Only prejudice, and a trick of the Mercator projection, prevents us from recognizing the enormity of the African continent. Covering nearly twelve million square miles, Africa is almost as large as North America and Europe combined. It is nearly twice the size of South America."
- unglaublich 5y agoAh, the Mercator Puzzle https://bramus.github.io/mercator-puzzle-redux/ https://bramus.github.io/mercator-puzzle-redux/
- desktopninja 5y agoRefreshing to see how many times this pops up on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=true+size+of
- mattowen_uk 5y agoClickable link: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=true+size+of https://hn.algolia.com/?q=true+size+of
- username90 5y agoWhy is that refreshing? You'd expect HN people to not find this map interesting and therefore not post it/upvote it as its just common knowledge. Continent and country sizes are just a few numbers that everyone has already seen.
- gundmc 5y agoThis reminds me of my favorite scene from The West Wing where they talk about how misleading the Mercator projection is with regard to the size of Africa. https://youtu.be/eLqC3FNNOaI https://youtu.be/eLqC3FNNOaI
- cortesoft 5y agoBig block of cheese day!
- tptacek 5y agoThe alternative projection used in that episode is apparently pretty bad too. (It's a great scene, though!)
- igitur 5y agoThis is exactly why I despise it when I people say "things go south" then they mean "get worse" or "north of" when they mean "better".
- bioinformatics 5y agoIt's big.
- bioinformatics 5y agoIt's big, quite big.
- scythe 5y agoThere are three basic choices you have with a rectangular map: - Mercator, which preserves shape and direction, but not size - Gall equal-area etc, which preserves size and direction, but not shape - AuthaGraph, which preserves size and shape, but not direction No rectangular map will ever be satisfactory, but maybe putting all three together would make a good display? And then there's my stupid projection (a rip-off of August epicycloidal): https://postimg.cc/N5nZ18CF https://postimg.cc/N5nZ18CF
- dang 5y agoPast related threads. Others? The size of Africa, in perspective (photo) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7492708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7492708 - March 2014 (1 comment) True size of Africa - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7249832 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7249832 - Feb 2014 (31 comments) The True Size of Africa - Misleading Maps - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6226458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6226458 - Aug 2013 (101 comments) The True Size of Africa (2010) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5790504 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5790504 - May 2013 (44 comments) The True Size of Africa (infographic) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1865958 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1865958 - Nov 2010 (2 comments) The True Size of Africa - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1789769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1789769 - Oct 2010 (1 comment) The True Size of Africa - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1780004 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1780004 - Oct 2010 (38 comments) Strange Maps: Did you realize Africa is this big? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=366692 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=366692 - Nov 2008 (51 comments)
- boraoztunc 5y ago>> The Good Design Grand Award, arguably Japan’s most prestigious award for design, went out to architect Hajime Narukawa’s completely groundbreaking design for a map of the world. His map, the AuthaGraph World Map, isn’t your average map of the globe: It’s a near-perfect representation of the continents and oceans as they exist on our spherical planet, all laid out on a two-dimensional surface. https://totravelistolive.co/authagraph-world-map/ https://totravelistolive.co/authagraph-world-map/
- alanbernstein 5y agoI prefer the (related) Dymaxion approach myself, but I'll admit it's not quite as accessible.
- birktj 5y agoI really like the Dymaxion projection as well, especially the fact that one can easily see that all major land masses are separated by only small distances of water. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map
- zokier 5y agoDymaxion map is neat, but I don't think human brains are very good at handling interrupted maps and Dymaxion is particularly challenging. It is just pretty difficult to mentally intuit how the edges connect, and especially judge distances that cross the edges. Trying to eyeball something like Sydney-Lima great circle path on Dymaxion is unintuitive. Of similar interrupted style, I think butterfly projections are even better. They might distort land masses slightly more, but are immensely more readable. And they have very pretty symmetric outline.
- afterburner 5y agoEven better, a close relative of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahill%E2%80%93Keyes_projection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahill%E2%80%93Keyes_projectio...
- 5y ago
- pvorb 5y agoThat's not really accurate. Madagascar, for example, is about twice the size of Great Britain. That's without Ireland, but still...
- cortesoft 5y agoHe mentions this in the article.
- tome 5y agoHe does but I can't understand his rationale. He claims it's "just a symbolic image - it may as well have been just blobs to tell the story" and "Had I stretched things to truly properly show that though, then the whole shape of Africa would have looked very awkwardly elongated." But why? One could scale the outlines so that they have the correct relative area whilst they preserve shape. I think it's just a poorly-designed map.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tardismechanic 5y agoReminds me of this scene: Why are we changing maps? (from The West Wing) - https://youtube.com/watch?v=eLqC3FNNOaI https://youtube.com/watch?v=eLqC3FNNOaI
- logbiscuitswave 5y agoI love that scene. It’s one I find myself thinking back on whenever there’s a cartography discussion (such as this thread).
- Tade0 5y agoOne of my early childhood toys was a little globe and I'll make sure my kid has one too.
- vmception 5y agoGlobes are great for inquisitiveness, but they are often outdated, with globes providers in certain regions simply never updating them. Many globes in the US still have Czechoslovakia as a country, let alone not having South Sudan on it, for example. And let's not get started about all the globes being Made in China and what that means for getting a perception of that region of the world. Owning a globe and giving it to a child is just a start.
- bombcar 5y agoI have a soft-spot for USSR globes - though ones before that are now arguably more accurate than the ones from the 80s.
- paulpauper 5y agobecase why not https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTQbiNvZqaY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTQbiNvZqaY
- djmips 5y ago^ Africa video by TOTO
- afterburner 5y agoWow the audio is badly out of sync.
- doggodaddo78 5y agoI don't know why, but I thought of this song when I saw "Africa." Cesaria Evora - Africa Nossa https://youtu.be/QH1UG6V7iiY https://youtu.be/QH1UG6V7iiY
- mattowen_uk 5y agoAnd not this? https://youtu.be/FTQbiNvZqaY https://youtu.be/FTQbiNvZqaY Interesting... :)
- block_dagger 5y agoHow about an accurate rotatable 3 dimensional map using the puzzle piece idea? I’m not skilled at 3d animation but I bet a talented artist could do it fairly easily.
- DistressedDrone 5y agoAt that point why not just use a globe?
- williesleg 5y agoNobody gives a shit.
- ahi 5y agoMany years ago, a family member (USian, suburban, whitebread) was dating the son of a Nigerian diplomat posted in Addis Ababa. She asked him how long a drive it was, and that's how I knew the relationship was doomed. I just looked it up. Addis Ababa to Lagos is 2400 miles as the crow flies. This presumably auto-generated route planner states nearly 5000 miles driving. On day one on your drive to Lagos, it recommends 9 hours of driving and stopping in Gondar, still 3.5 hours to the Sudanese border. https://www.trippy.com/drive/Addis-Ababa-to-Lagos-Nigeria https://www.trippy.com/drive/Addis-Ababa-to-Lagos-Nigeria
- blowski 5y agoObligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/977/ https://xkcd.com/977/
- MihaiSandor 5y agoThis map ( https://thetruesize.com https://thetruesize.com )is very interesting, also.
- andix 5y agoOff course Africa is huge. I think it takes around 9 hours by plane to get from Cape Town to Tunis. But Africa is extremely diverse, there are so many different counties and cultures. What impressed me most recently, was the size of Brazil. I flew from Montevideo to Madrid and around one third of the 12 hour flight you just fly over Brazil
- mclightning 5y agoFlash News Today! A continent is bigger than most countries!
- dr_dshiv 5y agoIsn't this recent 2021 map fantastically simple and accurate? https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/18/22289120/globe-2d-map-double-sided-gott-equidistant-azimuthal-projection https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/18/22289120/globe-2d-map-dou...
- Havoc 5y agoAnd less GDP than california somehow...