r/educationalgifs • u/Super_University_821 • Sep 05 '26
How the Mercator projection distorts area, animated into the equal-area Equal Earth projection
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u/Objectalone Sep 06 '26 edited Sep 06 '26
The Mercator projection was a practical device for navigation. It wasn’t create to make regions more or less significant. We just got used to seeing the world that way. Centering a world map on Europe/Africa is arbitrary. There is no center or edge on the surface of a sphere.
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u/Termsandconditionsch Sep 06 '26
China puts China in the middle of their maps, which makes sense for the Middle Kingdom.
And yes, mercator preserves the angles, it’s a decent solution to the problem and more practical than for example dymaxion.
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u/blackdynomitesnewbag Sep 06 '26
It was a brilliant solution for the problem it solved. It required math that didn’t exist yet
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u/Laughing_Orange Sep 06 '26
Only the poles aren't arbitrary, and those can be flipped too. There's no logical reason why North should be up, except legacy and familiarity.
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u/friso1100 Sep 06 '26
Before the compas was a thing it was common to have the east at the top. It's where the sun came from after all. But after the compas north made more sense. Especially for sailing in the northen hemisphere.
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u/upinflames Sep 07 '26
The ancient Chinese who invented the compass literally called it the "south pointing needle." The compass doesn't point north any more than it points south, the needle just orients itself along Earth's magnetic field.
Even with a compass, orienting a map north vs. south is still arbitrary.
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u/friso1100 Sep 07 '26
You are not wrong. But because the further north you are in the northen hemisphere the more it looks like the compass is pointing north. Imagine the extreme senario, you are standing right next to the magnetic northpole (and for this thought experiment that is a neat singular point) when you walk around the pole its clear it's pointing towards the north. Obviously it's also pointing towards the south pole at the same time. But it's clear to see that it may create a bias in how it's read.
So it's not that it's impossible to use the south side for navigation or anything. But rather due to being close to the north it feels like the needle is pointing to a specific point north rather then south. It's a small bias.
So why did the Chinese have their compas pointing south? Well for one they where much closer to the equator then us. Like take Beijing. It's almost at the "top" of china. But at 40°N it's still below Barcelona and Rome. The rest is even further south. Some parts even below it the equator. So thanks to being so close to the equator, the effect you get is much smaller. Making going either way more arbitrary.
But there is also another, probably more important factor specifically related to china. Their compasses where not originally created for navigation but for fortune telling. Navigation came later. And south was already associated with good fortune. So when you have this existing tool that points south, and it turns out it's actually great for navigation as well. Then there really is no reason to suddenly flip it.
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u/the47man Sep 08 '26
Is that where the word Orientation comes from? Like pointing towards the Orient?
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u/mildly_ethnic Sep 06 '26
I have family in South America and North is not always up on their maps😆 they made sure to explain it to me
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u/si1versmith Sep 06 '26 edited Sep 10 '26
This is why I love this map that's flipped and centered on new Zealand.
https://i.imgur.com/whX1Llw.jpeg
https://www.equal-earth.com/Equal-Earth-Map-150E-EN-South-Up.jpg
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u/RegorHK Sep 06 '26
I d argue that obviously Asia, Europe/ Afrika and the Americas are the areas with most humans. Since this shows all of them like that, it is the best pick.
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u/shawndw Sep 06 '26
There is no center or edge on the surface of a sphere.
There is an axis of rotation and we placed the equator half way between polar north and polar south.
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u/The_Last_Spoonbender Sep 07 '26
Centering a world map on Europe/Africa is arbitrary.
Not arbitrary at all. Since it was the European sailors who were successful in the high sea navigation just before the modern industrial revolution, their map with Europe at the centre and top came to be.
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u/oneMerlin Sep 09 '26
That is exactly arbitrary but not random. I’d even call it a great example of the concept. Any place COULD have been chosen = arbitrary. A clear reason for the choice = not random, but still arbitrary.
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u/AibofobicRacecar6996 Sep 08 '26
You can center the map around the Americas and split Asia, but splitting a landmass like that would be stupid. There's only two places where the split could happen: the Atlantic or the Pacific, giving you two possible centers
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u/lfrtsa Sep 07 '26
Yep, and the map the UN chose isn't for use in navigation, but presumably, representation. Different maps for different purposes.
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u/rdrckcrous Sep 07 '26
not for navigation but also not for understanding cardinal relationship. it's not imeediately clears what's directly north of something else.
It also distorts shapes in favor of accurately portraying area.
maybe for aspects of education this map makes sense, but for just about anything else, it's worse.
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u/Test_After Sep 07 '26
Practical for Northern Europe.
Not so practical for rounding Cape Horn or navigating the straights of Malacca, or the Windward Isles.
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u/portuh47 Sep 06 '26
Was it arbitrary or was it a deliberate choice?
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u/Objectalone Sep 06 '26
It was a natural choice for the map makers. If I go outside and slowly rotate while looking at the horizon, I would think I was in the center of the world, and I'd be right. Same for you, wherever you are, naturally enough. European power meant that the European centered view became the norm world over, but the initial mapmaking perspective was a natural choice.
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u/portuh47 Sep 06 '26
So it wasn't arbitrary.
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u/Objectalone Sep 06 '26
The location of a mapmaker’s birth is arbitrary.
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u/portuh47 Sep 06 '26
Yes and we're all a collection of atoms. Accepting all of that, it was a deliberate choice.
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u/Objectalone Sep 06 '26
I’m not interested in the steamy loam of the politics underlying your insistence, so I’ll just step away.
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u/Jazztify Sep 06 '26
There was an article in The Onion years ago with the headline, “Greenland disappointed in Mercator map. Makes it look fat.”
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u/cormundo Sep 06 '26 edited Sep 06 '26
I hate this. Theres a reason [r/weknowaboutmercator](r/weknowaboutmercator) existed. As a geographer I am irritated.
Theres this bizzare thing where people act like the mercator map is a conspiracy theory because it distorts the equator, But its just the best way we figured out 500 years ago to flatten out a globe - Which is hard to do!
And people who just learned about this distortion get really stupid about it, Thus this un thing. This new map is also not a good fit for web based applications that require the map to be presented in a flat plane.
And the vote is totally unnecessary -
Like look at the un logo, adopted in the late 40s, it already using an interesting alternative map projection - 🇺🇳
This whole thing is frustrating because its very old news mascarading as new news
And its the geography equivalent of someone deciding water is called h20 in chemistry (which you learn in second grade) and trying to change the way we talk about it.
It is stupid that the us voted against it but its also stupid to be arguing about this in the first place. There should be no default map thats true because all maps distort reality, the new map is unfair to canada and antartica and australia for example. You just have to make decisions about distortion when making a world map and thats the narritive that it would be nice for the world to understand. So it should be chose the map projection best for the situation rather than something else.
Google maps solved this elegantly by going to a globe, which is the only “true” map
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u/Neutronium57 Sep 06 '26
I don't mind the vote but what's irritating me is how some African leaders use it to give speeches about how it will somehow give Africa its rightful place on the global stage or some shit.
Like, bro, it's a map. Africa being slightly larger and Greenland being visibly shrunk won't somehow make your country more prosperous.
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u/Jazztify Sep 06 '26
Oh this will definitely fool Trump. He won’t want to invade Greenland now cuz it’s too small.
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u/L_knight316 Sep 06 '26
Brother, please, we were talking about African leaders. Can we not have Super Hitler in every single conversation?
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u/DannyOdd Sep 07 '26
It's wild to me that any suggestion bordering on "can we please not tie literally everything back to Trump for five whole seconds" always gets a mob of downvotes. Like, just the idea that Mango Mussolini shouldn't live rent-free 24/7 in the forefront of our minds gets people so fucking mad.
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u/Jazztify Sep 07 '26
I agree, but I couldn’t pass up the joke. (You are right though. The day se stop telling Trump jokes will be a happy day).
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u/glowaboga Sep 10 '26 edited Sep 10 '26
I mean, while it may be true that statements like "putting africa on the global stage" are a bit too far-fetched, it is very ignorant to believe that maps - the primary tool through which we learn about how the world is built - don't impact our perception of different areas. It's especially damaging for continents which are economically and culturally disconnected from the rest of the world because then there are few other ways to right the belief that they are insignificant and small. Nobody pays attention to places which aren't visible on the map and size = visibility. The new map prioritizes faithful representations of where people live while sacrificing oceans and the poles (famously devoid of human settlements)
A good example about Africa is that currently, in the western world, there is a big issue with people believing that Africa as a whole is "one place" that is poor and war-torn with "the African culture". Sure people know there are different countries there but they don't actually pay attention. It becomes much more difficult to hold that belief once the knowledge that Africa is absolutely huge becomes common sense. Once you know of its size, it's very easy to conceptualize that there's room there for hundreds of different cultures and languages, that there is room for the extremes of wealthy countries and extremely poor ones. It quite literally starts occupying more of your world.
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u/Is_This_For_Realz Sep 11 '26
Thank you for saying this! I was screaming in my head.
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u/glowaboga Sep 11 '26
Its so incredibly frustrating to see people be so ignorant on such a simple and seemingly obvious topic. Like, just surface reading on it and some thinking is enough to understand that yeah, maps kinda do matter in the real world... If how maps presented the world doesn't matter to you, then why do you care so much when they are changed?
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u/Is_This_For_Realz Sep 11 '26
Just look at how much it matters to some of these responders! They are genuinely wounded and feeling a loss of their superiority because of being confronted by a different way of looking at the world!
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u/CAndCFan67 Sep 11 '26
Maps have little to do with that but the reality that what's happening half the world away isn't going to be as important to most people. We in the US hear more about the Middle east than what's happening within the majority of US states.
Changing the map isn't going to change that unless something significant that affects the majority of people occurs.
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u/Test_After Sep 07 '26
Eh, it isn't a huge difference for Australia. New Zealand, maybe.
It is a huge difference to Antartica, but right now the population there is preoccupied with H5N1, and birds and seals don't get a vote.
The 60/40 split has always misrepresented the Southern Hemisphere, and that distortion was made purely for the convenience of Northern hemisphere map readers.
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u/Calan_adan Sep 06 '26
Ultimately I don’t care what map the UN adopts or who voted for or against. I just get annoyed at the posts and comments that are like “They’re finally moving away from the Mercator projection because it’s distorted” while ignoring the fact the the new map is also distorted.
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u/JokoFloko Sep 06 '26
Ive been downvoted on so many "non educational" type subs for trying to explain this. They just assume I'm an American and mad about it... apparently because America voted against it or something?
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u/DrProfSrRyan Sep 06 '26 edited Sep 06 '26
Been in a similar spot.
America voted against it, therefore it must be good. If you're also against it you must be MAGA.
It's anyone dealing with people with that simple mindset.
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u/MyUserNameIsSkave Sep 07 '26
Wasn’t the US vote against it because changing from a flawed projection to an other was meaningless ? Honestly I feel the same about it.
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u/Pugs-r-cool Sep 06 '26
Yeah the mercator projection is still good in the modern day because it’s rectangular. Digital maps are able to loop endlessly because of it, which isn’t possible with a rounded projection. Of course other square / rectangular projections exist, but mercator is the most common.
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u/Jindujun Sep 07 '26
Which is why I've been saying this issue is not a map issue, it's an education issue.
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u/SeriouslyGetOverIt Sep 11 '26
Reddit is obsessed with the Mercator projection. Don't question it. They're also obsessed with cow farts.
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u/RegorHK Sep 06 '26
Global maps are for information purposes where the actual area is more important than the Mercator properties.
Different projections shows different things and that navigation and education and general news have vastly different goals.
Mercator was the best way to flatten the globe for navigation. Why it is the best way for current 21 cent purposes.
The idea that there should be no default map simply ignores how human minds work.
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u/Bright-Emu1790 Sep 06 '26
I think shape is more important as that is what we perceive from a map. By distorting shape it means that a region on a world map will look very different to a map only displaying the region.
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u/RegorHK Sep 06 '26
The distorted areas with Mercator are no issue for you.
Seems that you lie to yourself while throwing a fit about change.
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u/HonkiDonki3 Sep 06 '26
The Mercator projection does not distort shape.
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u/RegorHK Sep 06 '26
The surface area is distorted. Also Mercator distorts the shapes over larger distances especially near the poles.
Obviously this is to high of a concept for you.
Not only are you wrong, you are completely wrong.
I bet you are oh so proud about understanding Mercator.
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u/HonkiDonki3 Sep 07 '26
Also Mercator distorts the shapes over larger distances especially near the poles.
So does Equal Earth. Just more and (almost) everywhere.
I bet you are oh so proud about understanding Mercator.
Must make you very sad that the Mercator prohection has some real advantages over your beloved Equal Earth projection. No need to cry though.
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u/Is_This_For_Realz Sep 11 '26
It's funny how reddit votes don't actually mean anything to true or false
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u/Bright-Emu1790 Sep 06 '26
How is this throwing a fit lol. I'm just saying that I think shape is more important than area. I don't care what maps the UN use.
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u/BharatiyaNagarik Sep 06 '26
No. What you are doing is the equivalent of "All lives matter". It is significant that mercator projection makes us see the global north as what it is. If you don't understand racial undertones of map projections, then you will not understand why the trump administration opposed the vote.
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u/DotDootDotDoot Sep 07 '26
If you don't understand racial undertones of map projections
It's not because you claim that something exists that this thing exists.
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u/BharatiyaNagarik Sep 07 '26
See A New World Map Begins to Repair 450 Years of African Marginalization. https://www.printmag.com/culturally-related-design/a-new-world-map-begins-to-repair-450-years-of-african-marginalization/
Please educate yourself.
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u/_whydah_ Sep 06 '26
This is just completely stupid. It just is. Nobody thinks of the global South as being bad because it's lower on the map. People love Australia. People love visiting South America, even if most countries are having a hard time. They're lots in life aren't determined by directionality of the map.
All that being said, Africa being slightly proportionally larger probably only accentuates how messed up it is. For all the wonderful, farmable land, African countries have accomplished precisely zero without help from the rest of the world.
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u/cormundo Sep 06 '26
I mean i have an academic geography background - a huge aspect of that is unpqcking why maps are racist. I conpletely agree the racist fascistic american reason for saying no is evil.
My point is not that mercator doesnt have problems, its that its not a conspiracy. This not a new discovery. Its a key part of web based gis infrastructure. I am saying this is more complex and also more stupid than it seems on the surface.
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u/BharatiyaNagarik Sep 06 '26
I mean i have an academic geography background - a huge aspect of that is unpqcking why maps are racist.
Then use that knowledge and do not belittle the concerns of african people.
My point is not that mercator doesnt have problems, its that its not a conspiracy.
No one thinks it is a conspiracy. However, using the mercator projection has racial implications. That doesn't require a conspiracy, just neglect. You just want to show how smart you are, and so you call everything "stupid". I am not impressed. All you end up doing is dismissing the legitimate concerns of black people as "old news" and something that is "stupid to be arguing about". The vote was required, and was good to have.
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u/notretarded_100 Sep 06 '26
Is this really big of topic that concerns a UN vote? Will this help any black people in any tangible way? And what kind of racial implications does mercator projection even have? You just want to show how righteous you are and so you call everyone "racist". I'm not impressed.
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u/The_Nim Sep 06 '26
This isn’t that big of a deal to get worked up over and write a short essay…
Plus it’s H2O not H20… there isn’t only 20 hydrogens in water
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u/kg_draco Sep 06 '26
This isn't that big of a deal
UN vote
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u/Regendorf Sep 06 '26
UN votes about a whole bunch of things all the time, and not everyone follows them. America is one single continent in their world's division, yet in the Anglosphere it gets divided into 2.
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u/fonkordie Sep 06 '26
Finally all the problems in Africa have been addressed - we can move on to other issues now.
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u/Northern_Wyven_63 Sep 06 '26
if you bend a pice of paper in half, the center will look bigger than the rest. The original map wasant wrong, just not designed for politics.
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u/ARandomWalkInSpace Sep 06 '26 edited Sep 06 '26
It warped the size of the countries, in map terms, that's wrong.
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u/Northern_Wyven_63 Sep 06 '26
it warped them to focus on sea navigation, thats not wrong, just a diffrent focus. theirs no reason to change it except polotics.
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u/ARandomWalkInSpace Sep 06 '26
And now we don't need them for navigation. So, we can use better maps.
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u/Northern_Wyven_63 Sep 06 '26
It's the most-used map on Earth. And it's not like this change is better. There are much better models.
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u/Wimble-Womble Sep 06 '26
Seem a shitty projection if you’re losing information. The one good thing about Mercator was that all landmass were visible - there must be better options than this.
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u/Austerlitz2310 Sep 06 '26 edited Sep 06 '26
A globe. You won't ever get a better 2D projection of a 3D globe. No projection will retain 100% information.
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u/Wimble-Womble Sep 06 '26
Nope. You can’t see all countries at once - unless your globe is transparent.
There are better 2D representations - combined with a bit of education that distortion will always happen.
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u/hopingforabetterpast Sep 06 '26
They're actually more faithful then, since you also can't see all of the earth at once in reality.
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u/RegorHK Sep 06 '26
Mercator distorts the distances in most directions. You loose information there. Or worse. You show information in a nonintuitive nonlinear way.
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u/HonkiDonki3 Sep 06 '26
So does Equal Earth. Just that with Mercator, you can straight-forwardly transform the (x,y) coordinates on the map back into spherical coordinates (and calculate distances). Not possible with Equal Earth, at least not without solving a system of equations.
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u/RegorHK Sep 06 '26
Obviously my comment was about the
"Seem a shitty projection if you’re losing information."
You loose information. And for the "global view" you introduce to much distortions.#
And no no one is transforming any bullishit from a Mercator global map on a sphere.
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u/Wimble-Womble Sep 06 '26
Sure - I definitely agree than any information about country shapes and sizes are lost with Mercator but with this new projection, landmasses in the polar regions are not even visible. New Zealand it looks much harder to see too. I agree that Africa need to be enlarged but not at the expense of the rest of the world. There are a few other projections that do this better.
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u/DotDootDotDoot Sep 07 '26
I definitely agree than any information about country shapes and sizes are lost with Mercator
Only size. Mercator purpose is to keep the shape.
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u/Regendorf Sep 06 '26
New Zealand it looks much harder to see too
As if that wasn't true already with Mercator. r/MapsWithoutNZ exists despite Mercator
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u/iAhMedZz Sep 06 '26
For some reason feels like the non-mercator projection has ended up making Africa bigger than Asia?
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u/Zatmos Sep 08 '26
It's a move from a map which distorts areas to a map which distorts shapes. I personally prefer correct shapes.
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u/pvt_miller Sep 06 '26
I love that the Mercator projection can now be used to trigger the protests of a bunch of whiny first year social studies students and most of Reddit. What a dumb fucking trend this is. Also, this is not news to anyone who has read a book remotely related to geography.
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u/RegorHK Sep 06 '26
Looking at the comments on that the whiny people seem mostly to be clingy on Mercator.
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u/Is_This_For_Realz Sep 11 '26
Responses to this are very interesting. I always wondered where the truly stupid people hang out on Reddit. I mean surely they are here among us. And they are. They're right here in this subreddit protecting their butt hurt nostalgia feelings about a map!
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u/throwawayhyperbeam Sep 06 '26
Funny how in the pursuit of perfection and equality things end up worse
Personally I'd go for that one that has like 8 sections
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u/_whydah_ Sep 06 '26
I hate how Reddit and so much of the world are just "Trump bad." The Mercator is useful even educationally because then land masses keep recognizable shape when viewing them on a globe. The only continent whose general shape is preserved is Africa's (the least important one).
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u/HonkiDonki3 Sep 06 '26
Mercator does not only keep recognizable shape, it keeps the exact shape.
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u/Gunmetalstorm Sep 08 '26
No it doesn't. The differences in shape are immediately evident if you compare it against a globe.
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u/FluffyCheese Sep 06 '26
Africa's (the least important one)
As an African, thank you for confirming why adopting a new map to correct bais matters in the first place!
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u/_whydah_ Sep 07 '26 edited Sep 07 '26
Geopolitically, historically, and culturally, it's been the least influential of any continent. That's a fact.
EDIT: I'd add as well, that changing the way the map is oriented will do absolutely nothing to convince anyone that Africa has more importance and grasping at this straw only shows how little Africa has had to offer in these areas.
I've been there. I spent a couple of months volunteering and traveling in Tanzania and Kenya. Obviously, not the whole continent, but arguably some of the better run areas outside of SA. It's an incredible place with people who would benefit from more outside political guidance not less. The de-colonization push was probably one of the most destructive forces for Africa and its people. It really is sad.
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u/greystar07 Sep 06 '26
What does the UN voting on something actually do though? I feel like most institutions worth their salt were already using an accurate map.
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u/hopingforabetterpast Sep 06 '26
No map is "accurate". It's a tradeoff. With equal area you lose conformity. Equal Earth doesn't preserve angles and shapes locally (look at Australia or Japan for example).
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u/greystar07 Sep 06 '26
30 upvotes for playing semantics, telling me something I already know, and not answering my question
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u/hopingforabetterpast Sep 07 '26
The point is that what the UN is doing has nothing to do with using the appropriate projection for any given purpose, but rather to promote the use of an equal area projection for generic use where we always see Mercator for no reason other than convention.
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u/jacksodus Sep 06 '26
Surely you can realise that symbolic gestures but also an appeal to authority matter at least a small bit.
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u/Super_University_821 Sep 05 '26
Interactive version, pick any country to see its Mercator inflation factor: https://papargyri.github.io/correct-the-map/
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u/lyf-ftw Sep 12 '26
My brain still has a hard time accepting this map: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/xQd8zLVxHd
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u/shawndw Sep 06 '26
So we now have a map that is useless for navigation and useless for understanding dimensions of land masses.
But its perfect for measuring the area of land masses except nobody uses maps for that.
Why did we do this again?
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u/crujiente69 Sep 06 '26
Where are you specifically navigating to that you need a map of the whole world?
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u/deftdabler Sep 05 '26
Seeing this, the new one makes so much more sense.. and the old looks utterly stoopid
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u/ApprehensiveFactor58 Sep 06 '26
L'union européenne ou l'ONU je ne sais plus, à voté la fin de l'utilisation de mercator au profit de carte géographiquement exact par rapport à la taille réelle des continents sur une proposition de l'Afrique, seul les US on voté contre
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u/Termsandconditionsch Sep 06 '26
It’s not accurate though. It just swaps one distortion for another.
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u/cancel-out-combo Sep 06 '26
Correction. The UN just voted to undo Mercator's redrawing of the world
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u/onda-oegat Sep 06 '26 edited Sep 06 '26
Why couldn't they shift the perspective a little bit so that Russia isn't cut off?
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u/Angel_Brunestud Sep 06 '26
Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about?
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u/onda-oegat Sep 06 '26
The north east of Russia is in the wrong end of the map if you want to have all the mainlands on the same side of the map
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u/tyen0 Sep 06 '26
https://xkcd.com/977/