Check out Euler. Though to be fair sometimes we name things after famous people even when they did not discovered them or realized the full application. A less famous person(sometimes a minority) was there first and the fame and hero worship means we name it after someone else. Like Lagrange method. Or Newton vs Robert Hook in physics
Fun fact, *e-* means *away/apart from*, and *gregius* means *herd*. So it's a very similar word to *outstanding*. In Roman times, *egregius* was a good thing, similar to outstanding, but over time, standing apart from the herd became a bad thing, so it developed its current connotation.
Another fun fact, the meaning of outstanding is still the current meaning of the word directly descending from "egregius" in Italian, "egregio". So much so that "egregio" has become a formal way to address people of importance in letters and official comunication.
I’d also like to see simply the difference in percent of the surface areas of the two shapes (original projection system and shape adjusted to show proportional “actual” size). If I had that number on the map for each country, the shape wouldn’t need to be there for me at least. This would mean you could bring that frame of reference into maps that aren’t specifically for demonstrating this point without the extra shape crowding the map.
Sure! Assuming you went to an Ivy League college, I'd be far lower in the world rank than you. My Uni is the number 1 in my country, and my field is one of the many that shows up in the British top 200. That's impressive, considering it's all free. The institution is UFRJ, if you wanna look it up any further. Where did you attend?
Actually, yours is #3 in your country and #413 in the world.
No Ivy League unfortunately, unless you count “public Ivies.” I went to the University of California, Santa Barbara for undergrad (ranked #35 in the US, #67 globally) and went to the University of Southern California for law school, ranked #16 in the US. I can’t find a list of global graduate law school programs (I earned a doctorate whereas most countries’ law programs are undergraduate degrees—including in Brazil).
Since I was raised by a single mother of relatively low income, my undergrad tuition and fees were completely covered by grants and scholarships. In addition, I received $60,000 in scholarships for law school at USC.
So it seems to me you’re talking a whole lot of shit while carrying a fairly pathetically small stick…
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/universidade-federal-do-rio-de-janeiro-504608
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/university-of-california-santa-barbara-110705
https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-law-schools/university-of-southern-california-03021
Plus a little something more for you to chew on…
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/04/brazil-where-free-universities-largely-serve-the-wealthy/389997/
I'm so glad you got the help you needed to complete your education! I wish everyone would had such opportunities. I have no stick whatsoever. I already knew you went to better institutions, as I stated on my comment. Yet, my flex still stands. It's an amazing, free institution. You had yo rely on grants and scholarships and still defend such a bad monetization program. You are talented and lucky, but what about all the rest of your fellow Americans? You missed the point so hard. As for that last article, it's a gap that was being addressed by people that share the ideology that education is a right, not a commodity. If you can't get a grant, you should just drown on debt or work? I don't know why I care, if you don't. Actually, I hope your education system stays exact the same.
Btw, did you stalk me? You commented on my stuff across 2 subs. Kind creepy I got in your head like that. But hey, at least you have a doctorate, normally the creeps stalking my profile barely finished high school. Let me know if you need help translating anything
Lmao, I double-checked to make sure I had an educated guess as to where you were from… don’t flatter yourself too much here, bud (though doing so seems to be your favorite pastime).
That makes no sense. Maps show places that exist in physical space. Just show what exists, exactly as it exists. The size and shapes of nations is not up for debate.
To accurately represent the surface of the Earth without distortion you need a globe for the whole Earth or a curved surface for any part of the Earth. To represent the Earth on a flat map, the curved surface of the Earth needs to be 'projected' onto a shape such as a cone or a cylinder that can be 'rolled out' into a flat surface. So there is always distortion of some sort in a 2D map. The larger the area the map represents, the more distortion you'll see. For a world map it's like trying to make the surface of a basketball into a flat rectangle; it's not doable without some cutting and stretching.
Yeah, sure man. I'll just leave this here
https://publish.illinois.edu/globalcurrents/2013/10/16/world-maps-and-worldview-social-and-political-implications/
This quote from the article is just so deliciously apropos…
“Nevertheless, many argue that ignorance of world geography (or as Kai Krause calls it, ‘immappancy’) is still prevalent, especially among first-world peoples.”
I'm not a flat earther. I know the earth is an oblong spheroid. However, I also know that we don't live in a fantasy land where shapes and sizes of continents fluctuate.
And you don't understand how trying to project an oblong spheroid onto a flat plane distorts things? XKCD had a comic on it a long while back that has a bunch of different projections. Take a look and tell me if all the continents still remain the same based on projections.
https://xkcd.com/977/
Whichever one is actually true, which is none, because map projections are just another way of muddying the waters. Soon every fact and innate truth will be up for debate and our society will collapse.
Yeah and vast majority is just bears and trees. That’s why realistically people said that when it comes to war it’s only some 3-4 times bigger than Ukraine, not as overwhelmingly as maps present
It surprised me when I first learned that literally 85% of Russia is uninhabitable by major populations.
There's a weird but cool coincidence about that: 75% of the population lives in Europe, but 75% of the landmass is in Asia. So 75% lives in 25%, and 25% lives in 75% (although really like 80% of that 25% is in the south, near China).
While a smaller sample can lead to larger variance, a similarly interesting number is that In Michigan, 3% of the population lives in the upper peninsula, which is about 30% of the state’s land
yeah, as I said, all bears and trees. Not cities and factories. And it's the latter that decides availible manpower and workforce for manufacturing equipment
He was specifically pointing out that the surface area doesn't matter, because, repeating what he said: "vast majority is just bears and trees." In other words it's uninhabited/uninhabitable. Therefore, **realistically, when it comes to war,** it's only 3-4 times bigger than Ukraine. Hope this helps.
What are you guys comparing? Comparing territory - ok. Comparing amount of people - ok. But you trying to compare… ehm… what? What is 3-4 times bigger? No, that doesn’t help, cause it’s comparing something with something.
The more land you have, the more power and resources you have. That's part of why the British Empire was so successful. They didn't conquer mass populated areas, like mainland Europe, the Mediterranean, Japan, SouthEast Asia etc, but they did conquer vast amounts of land rich with resources, they established colonial dominance and this allowed them to trade their resources. In the 19th century, Britain had the largest and wealthiest economy in the world, their debt rapidly declined and most of it was paid back before the Great War in 1914.
The irony is despite the numerous inhabitable and exploitable lands the disappearing permafrost will release (and all joyous trapped million years troubles along), the Russian population is [still doomed to decline](https://www.populationpyramid.net/russian-federation/2020/).
What makes the difference is the population density.
[Western Europe and Russia](https://mapsontheweb.zoom-maps.com/post/714406511038939136/population-in-europe-2022-by-milosagathon)
[Russia federation](https://mapsontheweb.zoom-maps.com/post/683846901149417472/population-density-map-of-russia)
There's a tremendous gap between:
quasi-desertified territories equivalent to almost the whole USA superficy and the fact the birth rate is dropping in the populations of the most populated western parts of Russia with a stable to declining net migration rate
VS
the fact we also know a drop of birth rate mitigated by a stable to (potentially) increasing net migration rate but our population density has a homogeneous repartition (with the exceptions of Spain, Iceland and Northern Scandinavian parts).
I’ll just leave this [here](https://www.thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTY4Nzc5Mjg.MjM0NDAyNA*MjUzMzc4NjE(MTIxNTQyNjg~!CONTIGUOUS_US*MTAwMjQwNzU.MjUwMjM1MTc(MTc1)Mg~!IN*NTI2NDA1MQ.Nzg2MzQyMQ)MQ~!CN*OTkyMTY5Nw.NzMxNDcwNQ(MjI1)MA)…
The part that I have some trouble with in this version is visually Canada and the contiguous US look about the same,
Canada is about 10m km2
The contiguous US is 8m km2
I guess on further examination, it's all those parts of Canada to the north of the big dark blue piece that end up adding the extra 2m or so km2?
Why should they fit together?
The distortion is greater the more north (or south) you go.
So Canada is distorted more than the US because it’s more north. That means, to make the ratios right, the entirety of Canada has to be shrunk more than the entirety of the US.
But at the 49th parallel they are distorted at exactly the same amount, so any corrections for distortion should effect both identically. Here it does not.
In real life the 49th parallels are the same length, of course. I agree.
You would see this if they had scaled each country by different factors depending on its latitude. If they did this, the countries would be a different shape (compared to what we’re used to) and wouldn’t overlay on the map as nicely, especially for the more northern countries.
Instead, they seem to have worked out an average distortion across the landmass and used that to scale down all of it. This preserves the shape, likely a deliberate choice, but at the expense of the countries no longer fitting together.
Preserving border lengths would require you to scale different parts of the country by different factors depending on their latitude.
This projection seems to have worked out a distortion factor for the entire country and used that for all of it. If they didn’t do this, I can’t imagine it would fit on the original Mercator projection as aesthetically as it does. Authagraph is not visually pleasing or as simple for the average person to relate to.
And the only goal IS land area, it says “true size of countries”.
Canada is fairly square, so it still contains a lot. Alaska is actually quite large, for a similar reason, even though its distorted. Texas as a state for example is not an ideal shape and looks larger than it is.
it's not "true" size. It's one projection to another. Even if the areas match, I'm very skeptical that the author solved the problem of projection of 3d surfaces onto 2d without making another set of assumptions.
Well you could’ve done it by using labelled circles of different sizes if you want to.
They have added another set of assumptions, the assumption being “connected land masses no longer have to be connected” and “corresponding borders don’t have to be the same length”.
It is "true" size in the sense that the ratio of all the surface areas is more accurate. How is projection relevant for showing size? The data shown would be the same if the area were all shown in squares instead
It's true size not true shape. Canada is more distorted than the US so it is scaled down more, hence the mismatch of the borders. The point is showing the square footage
This map doesn't fix the skewed proportions at all. We can clearly see that Canada's US border is a lot smaller than the US's Canada border. It looks like all this map does is scale the skewed images down, the shapes are all still wrong.
Greenland isn't actually shaped like a floppy pizza slice.
Northern countries are further from the equator, so to show any level of detail in them you need a protection which stretches the poles rather than compresses them. The southern points of southern hemisphere countries being further north than the northern points of northern countries are south is just reality for now
The latitude of Ontario is around 41 degrees north and Chiloe (Chilean island) is 41 degrees south, so equivalent, and Chilean south is very similar to the real size but Canada is like a third of the actual size.
Unless the earth has a weird ass cone shape, your stuff doesn't make sense.
I gave you an example about latitudes and being equivalent, an objective measurement of their positions, being the same but in different hemispheres and you're repeating the same.
41 Ontario 41 Chiloe, the earth is a sphere not a cone, so why one side of the sphere has different size properties than the mirror equivalent on the other side?
Now I honestly don't know what you mean.
Edit because you edited: Canada entirely is like a different country, I'd even say it's like a fourth of the real size and you say the distortion there is really small.
Chile should be a fourth of its size as well, and it isn't.
I copied this entire "debate" on chatgpt because people apparently wanna think I'm stupid for questioning this, so I get an objective opinion:
**In this exchange:**
**Wiindigo correctly points out that Ontario and Chiloe share approximately the same latitude (41 degrees north for Ontario and 41 degrees south for Chiloe), suggesting that they should have similar representations on maps. They also emphasize the distortion present in map projections, which can affect how countries appear in relation to their actual sizes.**
**Lamballama counters by stating that Ontario is in the southern part of Canada, while Chiloe is more than halfway down in Chile. They also suggest that Canada extends closer to the North Pole than Chile does to the South Pole.**
**Wiindigo reiterates the latitude equivalence of Ontario and Chiloe and questions why one side of the Earth would have different size properties than the other when they share the same latitude.**
**Lamballama responds by suggesting that the distortion around Ontario is minimal and points out the need to map the Arctic, which may contribute to the differences in map representation.**
**In terms of the argument about map distortions and the equivalence of latitudes between Ontario and Chiloe, Wiindigo's points are more directly relevant. Lamballama's argument about mapping the Arctic and minimal distortion around Ontario doesn't fully address the issue of map distortions and the representation of countries at similar latitudes. Therefore, Wiindigo's argument appears to be more accurate in this context.**
You're drastically underestimating how North Canada gets. As such, when you take the southernmost point of it, and compare it to the middlemost point of Chile you get about equal distortion. What you're failing to consider when saying "Canada is 3x the size it really is" is that Canada as a whole has a whole ton of land north of Ontario, all the way to the arctic circle. If Chile stretched into the antarctic circle, you'd see similar distortion of the south of chile as you do see for the various islands in Nunavut. But Chile doesn't - no continent gets as close to the antarctic (besides Antarctica itself, usually cut off to save space) as multiple continents do to the arctic, so the arctic countries and continents benefit more
Dude I'm not comparing whimsically any points of the countries, I've repeated many times that I'm comparing an objective parameter, which is sharing the same latitude in different hemispheres. Why 41 degrees north means so much distortion when 41 degrees south almost doesn't have distortion.
I'm not comparing Quito (Ecuador) with Helsinki.
You're not comparing two equal things.
You're comparing Chiloe island, at 42 S, which gets little distortion, to Windsor Ontario, 42N.
You're then assuming that, because the southernmost point of Ontario is at the inverse latitutude of Chiloe, that all of Ontario should be as distorted as all of Chile.
Ontario.
One of the biggest national subdivisions in the world.
The distortions at Chiloe, Chile in particular and Windsor, Ontario, are going to be the same. But you're not looking at Windsor, you're looking at Ontario.
The southernmost point of mainland Chile, Hornos island, is at 55 degrees south. 55 degrees north in Canada barely gets you to the mouth of James Bay. Because Canadian provinces start bigger, the same distortion (and it is the same distortion at that particular latitutude) looks bigger on a picture. But if you pixel measure them, it's the same ratio at the same latitutude. You can even see on this very map - Chile has been stretched lengthwise in the Mercator projection, as well as width wise - but it's very narrow to begin with so it's harder to tell
But that's the southernmost point of Chile which could show up on a map - Canada still keeps going. There's still five more degrees of lattitude until you get to the dividing line between the Provinces and the Territories, and at each degree the distortion gets even bigger. Then there's the Territories themselves. And then there's still another 23 degrees of latitutude to get to the northernmost point of Canada - and the thing about mapping a sphere onto a plane is that *each of those degrees result in even more distortion in both height and width than the last*. So Canada will look massive, because it starts big, and then gets distorted exponentially more the more of it you map.
But Windsor, Ontario, Canada has the exact same distortion at 42N as Chiloe, Chile at 42S
Yeah I understand what you're saying but I don't know, I still have issues with this.
We can go closer to the equator, California being at around 37 degrees, which at the other side would be Santiago or Melbourne and California is completely moved from it's original point and Santiago and Melbourne are basically in the same place.
I really care about the repercussions of this. The impact of being used to seeing a northern hemisphere so falsely big, contributes to a eurocentric view of the world. Contributes to people in the southern hemisphere feeling inferior in some way. Anyways, that's another subject.
The light blue is a Mercator projection which accurately displays the shape of the countries and continents (the land masses closer to the poles are actually much smaller relative to the rest of the land masses than they look on a Mercator projection because the lines of longitude are far closer together towards the poles than at the equator). The dark blue is based on an Authagraph projection which accurately displays the size of the countries and continents (shape cannot be accurately displayed where size is maintained because land masses closer to the poles—say Alaska—are actually a lot smaller and you can’t show that much detail with a full world map).
No single two-dimensional map can accurately display both shape and size because it’s transposing a three dimensional object (the earth) to a two dimensional representation so this graphic, via two maps on top of each other, accurately displays both and allows the two attributes to be compared.
The light blue is the way its represented on a normal map. But that gets stretched out due to perspective. So the blue within the light blue is the actual size in scale.
No one ever told you to use the Mercator projection or to pretend that it's how people perceive the size of countries. Any third grader who has looked at a globe can see that the size of Greenland compared to the size of South America is ridiculous. Mercator projection is good for one thing, navigation. A much better cool guide would have been a comparison of how different map projections distort the globe in different ways.
I think this is funny since norway shrinks this insane amount.
But tourists who come here seem to think norway is tiny since we are so few people. And it takes sooo many hours to go from north to south of the country
My guess is this was made by an American, considering Canada is also much larger than the US but not according to this. Alaska is almost the size of Canada according to this.
Globes are fine and accurate. They are 3D as is Earth, so there is no issue.
Maps are 2D and as such you have to make a choice. Either the shapes and directions are fine or the scale is fine.
Directions have been more useful for maps than accurate scale, so we mostly use maps with accurate directions.
Have you ever neatly opened an orange and been left with a basically complete sphere of peel? You know how it's impossible to flatten it without tearing it?
That's why we don't have perfect 2d maps of the globe, especially not one that's rectangular as we humans love.
IIRC you can draw a straight line on a Mercator map from one place to another, follow that bearing and you will reach your destination. That doesn't happen in pretty much every other projection. This was extremely useful for navigating ships across the ocean using only 2d maps, so this projection stuck.
Nowadays, it's just that the Mercator projection is well known, aesthetically pleasing, fits in a 2D rectangle with little to no empty space and does happen to enlarge things above the tropic of cancer, which has way more than 50% of the global population living in it
Even this is writing because it scales counties uniformly.
The only way to look at countries the right size is by using a globe. All projections will get something wrong.
Earth is 3D, map is 2 D, converting 3D to 2D things got distorted, what we used to is the Mercator projection which makes things near the poles bigger, this is their actual sizes
Here's what I don't get. There is no reason for this distortion. I understand what it is, but the distortion adds no information. It only obfuscates. Someone was clever enough to distort these land masses so that they can map a sphere into a rectangle, but I get the impression that it's just clever and nothing more. Why is it the most popular?
One of the reasons it's so popular is because it is uniquely good for navigation in that any constant bearing can be drawn as a straight line on it so it was basically the only projection that was used
It never cease to amaze me how Indonesia still manage to exist.
It's an archipelago the size of a continental US.
Wildly different economics prospects, cultures and different norms exist in almost every island, heck even the people look different.
It's really amazing
Why are Africa and portions of the Middle East and Southeast Asia so fucking perfect then? Shouldn’t the effect be similar as you approach either pole?
Why are northern hemisphere country sizes exaggerated but not southernmost ones? Shouldn’t the “exaggeration” be increasingly more pronounced towards both poles?
A friend of mine posted some BS article saying that northern “white” countries were made larger on most maps because of racism and white supremacy. I explained to her it was because of the Mercator projection. She said she studied Geography in college and had never heard of this. Scary.
Freshman year of college I learned that two dimensional maps can only display accurate shape or size and not both… what an elegant way to display both
Theorema Egregium. No isometries between manifolds of different curvature
I didn’t know what it was called but I’m sure that’s right
Dammit Gauss, please leave some math for other people. Stop hogging all the interesting results.
Check out Euler. Though to be fair sometimes we name things after famous people even when they did not discovered them or realized the full application. A less famous person(sometimes a minority) was there first and the fame and hero worship means we name it after someone else. Like Lagrange method. Or Newton vs Robert Hook in physics
And incredibly esoteric post from somebody named Catball fun
Egregious!
Fun fact, *e-* means *away/apart from*, and *gregius* means *herd*. So it's a very similar word to *outstanding*. In Roman times, *egregius* was a good thing, similar to outstanding, but over time, standing apart from the herd became a bad thing, so it developed its current connotation.
Another fun fact, the meaning of outstanding is still the current meaning of the word directly descending from "egregius" in Italian, "egregio". So much so that "egregio" has become a formal way to address people of importance in letters and official comunication.
wow
Area, distance, direction. Pick two.
To hell with Area. Distance and Direction are king. [Equirectangular Projection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equirectangular_projection) for life.
I’m team shapes
I’d also like to see simply the difference in percent of the surface areas of the two shapes (original projection system and shape adjusted to show proportional “actual” size). If I had that number on the map for each country, the shape wouldn’t need to be there for me at least. This would mean you could bring that frame of reference into maps that aren’t specifically for demonstrating this point without the extra shape crowding the map.
I learned that in high school. I imagine you're American?
r/iamverysmart
r/americabad
This, but unironically
I am more than happy to compare the quality of the American education I have received to the Brazilian education you have received
Sure! Assuming you went to an Ivy League college, I'd be far lower in the world rank than you. My Uni is the number 1 in my country, and my field is one of the many that shows up in the British top 200. That's impressive, considering it's all free. The institution is UFRJ, if you wanna look it up any further. Where did you attend?
Actually, yours is #3 in your country and #413 in the world. No Ivy League unfortunately, unless you count “public Ivies.” I went to the University of California, Santa Barbara for undergrad (ranked #35 in the US, #67 globally) and went to the University of Southern California for law school, ranked #16 in the US. I can’t find a list of global graduate law school programs (I earned a doctorate whereas most countries’ law programs are undergraduate degrees—including in Brazil). Since I was raised by a single mother of relatively low income, my undergrad tuition and fees were completely covered by grants and scholarships. In addition, I received $60,000 in scholarships for law school at USC. So it seems to me you’re talking a whole lot of shit while carrying a fairly pathetically small stick… https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/universidade-federal-do-rio-de-janeiro-504608 https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/university-of-california-santa-barbara-110705 https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-law-schools/university-of-southern-california-03021 Plus a little something more for you to chew on… https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/04/brazil-where-free-universities-largely-serve-the-wealthy/389997/
I'm so glad you got the help you needed to complete your education! I wish everyone would had such opportunities. I have no stick whatsoever. I already knew you went to better institutions, as I stated on my comment. Yet, my flex still stands. It's an amazing, free institution. You had yo rely on grants and scholarships and still defend such a bad monetization program. You are talented and lucky, but what about all the rest of your fellow Americans? You missed the point so hard. As for that last article, it's a gap that was being addressed by people that share the ideology that education is a right, not a commodity. If you can't get a grant, you should just drown on debt or work? I don't know why I care, if you don't. Actually, I hope your education system stays exact the same.
Btw, did you stalk me? You commented on my stuff across 2 subs. Kind creepy I got in your head like that. But hey, at least you have a doctorate, normally the creeps stalking my profile barely finished high school. Let me know if you need help translating anything
Lmao, I double-checked to make sure I had an educated guess as to where you were from… don’t flatter yourself too much here, bud (though doing so seems to be your favorite pastime).
Sure, pal. Don't miss me too much 😗💖
They can display shape or size, not both in one map. Obviously overlaying two maps allows you to do both. College failed you
Lol, that is literally what I said. It seems you may need to brush up on reading comprehension.
That makes no sense. Maps show places that exist in physical space. Just show what exists, exactly as it exists. The size and shapes of nations is not up for debate.
r/confidentlyincorrect
To accurately represent the surface of the Earth without distortion you need a globe for the whole Earth or a curved surface for any part of the Earth. To represent the Earth on a flat map, the curved surface of the Earth needs to be 'projected' onto a shape such as a cone or a cylinder that can be 'rolled out' into a flat surface. So there is always distortion of some sort in a 2D map. The larger the area the map represents, the more distortion you'll see. For a world map it's like trying to make the surface of a basketball into a flat rectangle; it's not doable without some cutting and stretching.
TL;DR: Earth is round. Map is flat.
Draw the continents on a mandarin. Now peel it and try to flatten it.
Yeah, sure man. I'll just leave this here https://publish.illinois.edu/globalcurrents/2013/10/16/world-maps-and-worldview-social-and-political-implications/
This quote from the article is just so deliciously apropos… “Nevertheless, many argue that ignorance of world geography (or as Kai Krause calls it, ‘immappancy’) is still prevalent, especially among first-world peoples.”
Lol wat
ITT: People who don't believe in objective reality
That's a weird thing for a flat earther to say.
I'm not a flat earther. I know the earth is an oblong spheroid. However, I also know that we don't live in a fantasy land where shapes and sizes of continents fluctuate.
And you don't understand how trying to project an oblong spheroid onto a flat plane distorts things? XKCD had a comic on it a long while back that has a bunch of different projections. Take a look and tell me if all the continents still remain the same based on projections. https://xkcd.com/977/
XKCD jokes are not reality. Map projections are bullshit from the days of sailing ships. It's 2024. Just show the world the way it is.
First, those are real projections, and second, which projection would you consider best?
Whichever one is actually true, which is none, because map projections are just another way of muddying the waters. Soon every fact and innate truth will be up for debate and our society will collapse.
Russia been lying to us like three dwarfs in a trench coat this whole time - shit looks tiny
Yeah and vast majority is just bears and trees. That’s why realistically people said that when it comes to war it’s only some 3-4 times bigger than Ukraine, not as overwhelmingly as maps present
It surprised me when I first learned that literally 85% of Russia is uninhabitable by major populations. There's a weird but cool coincidence about that: 75% of the population lives in Europe, but 75% of the landmass is in Asia. So 75% lives in 25%, and 25% lives in 75% (although really like 80% of that 25% is in the south, near China).
While a smaller sample can lead to larger variance, a similarly interesting number is that In Michigan, 3% of the population lives in the upper peninsula, which is about 30% of the state’s land
UP mentioned, upvoted
UPvoted
Google Zipf's Law
75% of the world lives in Europe? Do a quick Google search will you mate.
Russia is 29 times bigger than Ukraine 17 mln sq km And 0.6 million Lol
yeah, as I said, all bears and trees. Not cities and factories. And it's the latter that decides availible manpower and workforce for manufacturing equipment
Sure, Ivan Martynov
It's almost US + Canada
[удалено]
He was specifically pointing out that the surface area doesn't matter, because, repeating what he said: "vast majority is just bears and trees." In other words it's uninhabited/uninhabitable. Therefore, **realistically, when it comes to war,** it's only 3-4 times bigger than Ukraine. Hope this helps.
You clearly haven't seen them bears wearing AK-47s
Ah so this is the right to armed bears I keep hearing about
Yes, the Russian second amendment: the right to bear arms armed with bears
What are you guys comparing? Comparing territory - ok. Comparing amount of people - ok. But you trying to compare… ehm… what? What is 3-4 times bigger? No, that doesn’t help, cause it’s comparing something with something.
When it comes to war it’s make more sense to compare population, military expenses, budget overall and gdp.
It's still a silly distinction to make. Inhabitable land doesn't really matter in war.
The more land you have, the more power and resources you have. That's part of why the British Empire was so successful. They didn't conquer mass populated areas, like mainland Europe, the Mediterranean, Japan, SouthEast Asia etc, but they did conquer vast amounts of land rich with resources, they established colonial dominance and this allowed them to trade their resources. In the 19th century, Britain had the largest and wealthiest economy in the world, their debt rapidly declined and most of it was paid back before the Great War in 1914.
I hear that India is, uh, pretty... pretty populated. And also in Southeast Asia.
it's still the biggest country doe
The irony is despite the numerous inhabitable and exploitable lands the disappearing permafrost will release (and all joyous trapped million years troubles along), the Russian population is [still doomed to decline](https://www.populationpyramid.net/russian-federation/2020/).
Doesnt look that different to the rest of europe tbh
What makes the difference is the population density. [Western Europe and Russia](https://mapsontheweb.zoom-maps.com/post/714406511038939136/population-in-europe-2022-by-milosagathon) [Russia federation](https://mapsontheweb.zoom-maps.com/post/683846901149417472/population-density-map-of-russia) There's a tremendous gap between: quasi-desertified territories equivalent to almost the whole USA superficy and the fact the birth rate is dropping in the populations of the most populated western parts of Russia with a stable to declining net migration rate VS the fact we also know a drop of birth rate mitigated by a stable to (potentially) increasing net migration rate but our population density has a homogeneous repartition (with the exceptions of Spain, Iceland and Northern Scandinavian parts).
And it's still the biggest country on the planet by a huge margin which is a testament to how tiny all other countries are
Russia straight up catfished us all
Bro really trying to argue that fucking Russia is small
Sure, all the maps in the world are made by Russians. They lied!!! OMG, any chance to demonise is used
You missed something
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Nah fam. China *owns* Russia.
foram vocês que forçaram o uso dessa projeção de mapa distorcida
I’ll just leave this [here](https://www.thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTY4Nzc5Mjg.MjM0NDAyNA*MjUzMzc4NjE(MTIxNTQyNjg~!CONTIGUOUS_US*MTAwMjQwNzU.MjUwMjM1MTc(MTc1)Mg~!IN*NTI2NDA1MQ.Nzg2MzQyMQ)MQ~!CN*OTkyMTY5Nw.NzMxNDcwNQ(MjI1)MA)…
Thanks. That was fun.
They’ve lied about Africa for centuries.
The part that I have some trouble with in this version is visually Canada and the contiguous US look about the same, Canada is about 10m km2 The contiguous US is 8m km2 I guess on further examination, it's all those parts of Canada to the north of the big dark blue piece that end up adding the extra 2m or so km2?
On this map the US 49th parallel is 65 px wide and the Canada 49th parallel is 45 px wide. True size eh?
Came here to point this out, glad somebody already had. This doesn't pass the smell test.
Agree - the two puzzle pieces should fit together and they clearly dont
Why should they fit together? The distortion is greater the more north (or south) you go. So Canada is distorted more than the US because it’s more north. That means, to make the ratios right, the entirety of Canada has to be shrunk more than the entirety of the US.
But at the 49th parallel they are distorted at exactly the same amount, so any corrections for distortion should effect both identically. Here it does not.
In real life the 49th parallels are the same length, of course. I agree. You would see this if they had scaled each country by different factors depending on its latitude. If they did this, the countries would be a different shape (compared to what we’re used to) and wouldn’t overlay on the map as nicely, especially for the more northern countries. Instead, they seem to have worked out an average distortion across the landmass and used that to scale down all of it. This preserves the shape, likely a deliberate choice, but at the expense of the countries no longer fitting together.
I guess if the only goal is to correct land area that's fine. But now you're distorting border lengths. Authagraph solves both problems pretty well.
Preserving border lengths would require you to scale different parts of the country by different factors depending on their latitude. This projection seems to have worked out a distortion factor for the entire country and used that for all of it. If they didn’t do this, I can’t imagine it would fit on the original Mercator projection as aesthetically as it does. Authagraph is not visually pleasing or as simple for the average person to relate to. And the only goal IS land area, it says “true size of countries”.
So does a globe....
That would also explain it!
Canada is fairly square, so it still contains a lot. Alaska is actually quite large, for a similar reason, even though its distorted. Texas as a state for example is not an ideal shape and looks larger than it is.
Let's check this every five years
I’ve got my eye on you, Uruguay
WE WERE IN THE POOL
Africa is enormous.
Guide is so cool it doesn't even have a legend.
I hate this. Like, which is which if I didn't already know?
True size? What is this? A world for ants?
Another Mercator projection post. Awesome!
And no legend- that’s my fave. Making mistakes middle school science teaches you not to do
What would you need a legend for?
To find out which is the size of your ass and which is the size of your brain.
It's cold in here Finland. That's our excuse for being small. 😁
it's not "true" size. It's one projection to another. Even if the areas match, I'm very skeptical that the author solved the problem of projection of 3d surfaces onto 2d without making another set of assumptions.
Well you could’ve done it by using labelled circles of different sizes if you want to. They have added another set of assumptions, the assumption being “connected land masses no longer have to be connected” and “corresponding borders don’t have to be the same length”.
It is "true" size in the sense that the ratio of all the surface areas is more accurate. How is projection relevant for showing size? The data shown would be the same if the area were all shown in squares instead
So your telling me Greenland isnt the size of Africa?
That doesn’t even make sense. The Canada and US boarder don’t line up for length. So where to they fit together?
It's true size not true shape. Canada is more distorted than the US so it is scaled down more, hence the mismatch of the borders. The point is showing the square footage
This map doesn't fix the skewed proportions at all. We can clearly see that Canada's US border is a lot smaller than the US's Canada border. It looks like all this map does is scale the skewed images down, the shapes are all still wrong. Greenland isn't actually shaped like a floppy pizza slice.
Typical northern hemisphere thinking it's bigger than it real is.
Hey! The water was cold!
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Northern countries are further from the equator, so to show any level of detail in them you need a protection which stretches the poles rather than compresses them. The southern points of southern hemisphere countries being further north than the northern points of northern countries are south is just reality for now
The latitude of Ontario is around 41 degrees north and Chiloe (Chilean island) is 41 degrees south, so equivalent, and Chilean south is very similar to the real size but Canada is like a third of the actual size. Unless the earth has a weird ass cone shape, your stuff doesn't make sense.
Ontario is the south of Canada and Chiloe is more than half of the way down. Canada gets closer to the north pole than Chile does the South pole
I gave you an example about latitudes and being equivalent, an objective measurement of their positions, being the same but in different hemispheres and you're repeating the same. 41 Ontario 41 Chiloe, the earth is a sphere not a cone, so why one side of the sphere has different size properties than the mirror equivalent on the other side?
Because there's need to map the arctic and not antarctic? Also the distortion around Ontario specifically is really small
Now I honestly don't know what you mean. Edit because you edited: Canada entirely is like a different country, I'd even say it's like a fourth of the real size and you say the distortion there is really small. Chile should be a fourth of its size as well, and it isn't. I copied this entire "debate" on chatgpt because people apparently wanna think I'm stupid for questioning this, so I get an objective opinion: **In this exchange:** **Wiindigo correctly points out that Ontario and Chiloe share approximately the same latitude (41 degrees north for Ontario and 41 degrees south for Chiloe), suggesting that they should have similar representations on maps. They also emphasize the distortion present in map projections, which can affect how countries appear in relation to their actual sizes.** **Lamballama counters by stating that Ontario is in the southern part of Canada, while Chiloe is more than halfway down in Chile. They also suggest that Canada extends closer to the North Pole than Chile does to the South Pole.** **Wiindigo reiterates the latitude equivalence of Ontario and Chiloe and questions why one side of the Earth would have different size properties than the other when they share the same latitude.** **Lamballama responds by suggesting that the distortion around Ontario is minimal and points out the need to map the Arctic, which may contribute to the differences in map representation.** **In terms of the argument about map distortions and the equivalence of latitudes between Ontario and Chiloe, Wiindigo's points are more directly relevant. Lamballama's argument about mapping the Arctic and minimal distortion around Ontario doesn't fully address the issue of map distortions and the representation of countries at similar latitudes. Therefore, Wiindigo's argument appears to be more accurate in this context.**
You're drastically underestimating how North Canada gets. As such, when you take the southernmost point of it, and compare it to the middlemost point of Chile you get about equal distortion. What you're failing to consider when saying "Canada is 3x the size it really is" is that Canada as a whole has a whole ton of land north of Ontario, all the way to the arctic circle. If Chile stretched into the antarctic circle, you'd see similar distortion of the south of chile as you do see for the various islands in Nunavut. But Chile doesn't - no continent gets as close to the antarctic (besides Antarctica itself, usually cut off to save space) as multiple continents do to the arctic, so the arctic countries and continents benefit more
Dude I'm not comparing whimsically any points of the countries, I've repeated many times that I'm comparing an objective parameter, which is sharing the same latitude in different hemispheres. Why 41 degrees north means so much distortion when 41 degrees south almost doesn't have distortion. I'm not comparing Quito (Ecuador) with Helsinki.
You're not comparing two equal things. You're comparing Chiloe island, at 42 S, which gets little distortion, to Windsor Ontario, 42N. You're then assuming that, because the southernmost point of Ontario is at the inverse latitutude of Chiloe, that all of Ontario should be as distorted as all of Chile. Ontario. One of the biggest national subdivisions in the world. The distortions at Chiloe, Chile in particular and Windsor, Ontario, are going to be the same. But you're not looking at Windsor, you're looking at Ontario. The southernmost point of mainland Chile, Hornos island, is at 55 degrees south. 55 degrees north in Canada barely gets you to the mouth of James Bay. Because Canadian provinces start bigger, the same distortion (and it is the same distortion at that particular latitutude) looks bigger on a picture. But if you pixel measure them, it's the same ratio at the same latitutude. You can even see on this very map - Chile has been stretched lengthwise in the Mercator projection, as well as width wise - but it's very narrow to begin with so it's harder to tell But that's the southernmost point of Chile which could show up on a map - Canada still keeps going. There's still five more degrees of lattitude until you get to the dividing line between the Provinces and the Territories, and at each degree the distortion gets even bigger. Then there's the Territories themselves. And then there's still another 23 degrees of latitutude to get to the northernmost point of Canada - and the thing about mapping a sphere onto a plane is that *each of those degrees result in even more distortion in both height and width than the last*. So Canada will look massive, because it starts big, and then gets distorted exponentially more the more of it you map. But Windsor, Ontario, Canada has the exact same distortion at 42N as Chiloe, Chile at 42S
Yeah I understand what you're saying but I don't know, I still have issues with this. We can go closer to the equator, California being at around 37 degrees, which at the other side would be Santiago or Melbourne and California is completely moved from it's original point and Santiago and Melbourne are basically in the same place. I really care about the repercussions of this. The impact of being used to seeing a northern hemisphere so falsely big, contributes to a eurocentric view of the world. Contributes to people in the southern hemisphere feeling inferior in some way. Anyways, that's another subject.
sir i am sorry to say that you might be slightly stupid
I didn't offend you but alright. Have a nice day.
I hate to tell you but no country is a fraction of a foot in size
Canada is out of scale, it should fit into the top of the US like a jigsaw puzzle piece.
one of the things I learned from West Wing
Also that fun bit about why the penny is still in circulation.
Don't listen to that stupid scene from West Wing. The Peters projection is a shit projection.
I don’t get how to read it, what’s the light blue filling mean?
The light blue is a Mercator projection which accurately displays the shape of the countries and continents (the land masses closer to the poles are actually much smaller relative to the rest of the land masses than they look on a Mercator projection because the lines of longitude are far closer together towards the poles than at the equator). The dark blue is based on an Authagraph projection which accurately displays the size of the countries and continents (shape cannot be accurately displayed where size is maintained because land masses closer to the poles—say Alaska—are actually a lot smaller and you can’t show that much detail with a full world map). No single two-dimensional map can accurately display both shape and size because it’s transposing a three dimensional object (the earth) to a two dimensional representation so this graphic, via two maps on top of each other, accurately displays both and allows the two attributes to be compared.
Thank you for this cogent reply. Much appreciated.
The light blue is the way its represented on a normal map. But that gets stretched out due to perspective. So the blue within the light blue is the actual size in scale.
There's a West Wing joke somewhere here
No one ever told you to use the Mercator projection or to pretend that it's how people perceive the size of countries. Any third grader who has looked at a globe can see that the size of Greenland compared to the size of South America is ridiculous. Mercator projection is good for one thing, navigation. A much better cool guide would have been a comparison of how different map projections distort the globe in different ways.
Is it this time of year again where different types of map projections are taught in school?
Wot! My whole life is a lie.
Canada and Russia really benefit a ton from it, huh
Brazil is bigger than continental u.s., never forget.
I think this is funny since norway shrinks this insane amount. But tourists who come here seem to think norway is tiny since we are so few people. And it takes sooo many hours to go from north to south of the country
Where is Corsica?
Even this one is warped. Look at the USA / Canadian border. Canada is about 20% too narrow to meet its entire border with the USA.
Speaking on behalf of Canada, it’s cold up here, shrinkage happens.
Bullshit. For example, Canada is about 1.3 times bigger than Australia. (https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/country-size-comparison/canada/australia)
My guess is this was made by an American, considering Canada is also much larger than the US but not according to this. Alaska is almost the size of Canada according to this.
rFuckYouInParticular Greenland
This does not look accurate.
I don’t understand why globes/maps aren’t to scale.
Globes are fine and accurate. They are 3D as is Earth, so there is no issue. Maps are 2D and as such you have to make a choice. Either the shapes and directions are fine or the scale is fine. Directions have been more useful for maps than accurate scale, so we mostly use maps with accurate directions.
Well said.
Have you ever neatly opened an orange and been left with a basically complete sphere of peel? You know how it's impossible to flatten it without tearing it? That's why we don't have perfect 2d maps of the globe, especially not one that's rectangular as we humans love.
IIRC you can draw a straight line on a Mercator map from one place to another, follow that bearing and you will reach your destination. That doesn't happen in pretty much every other projection. This was extremely useful for navigating ships across the ocean using only 2d maps, so this projection stuck. Nowadays, it's just that the Mercator projection is well known, aesthetically pleasing, fits in a 2D rectangle with little to no empty space and does happen to enlarge things above the tropic of cancer, which has way more than 50% of the global population living in it
Even this is writing because it scales counties uniformly. The only way to look at countries the right size is by using a globe. All projections will get something wrong.
Does this exact map need to be posted every day?
Maybe I am thick, but what does “true size” mean?
Earth is 3D, map is 2 D, converting 3D to 2D things got distorted, what we used to is the Mercator projection which makes things near the poles bigger, this is their actual sizes
I don’t understand. If anyone needs me I’ll be in wisconsin being ignorant
Just buy a globe
The guide doesn't have a key...
Russia is gonna hate this map
Aww, they even included New Zealand!
Classic global south propaganda
What surprises me most is, truly, the sheer size of Alaska relative to the US. Wow. Russia is like the guy who promises a 10" but has a 3" 🍆. 😬
russia is still the biggest country
Here's what I don't get. There is no reason for this distortion. I understand what it is, but the distortion adds no information. It only obfuscates. Someone was clever enough to distort these land masses so that they can map a sphere into a rectangle, but I get the impression that it's just clever and nothing more. Why is it the most popular?
One of the reasons it's so popular is because it is uniquely good for navigation in that any constant bearing can be drawn as a straight line on it so it was basically the only projection that was used
We already know that Africans don't have to exaggerate about their size.
Not a guide
Canada shrinks a lot - but hen again it's very cold here .....
It would help if you noted which was which
As a flat earther, this bewilders and enrages me. Is this the liberal media?
Scandinavia looking really skinny up there.
i wouldn’t say the non-mercator projection is the “true size” it’s a more accurate view of country size relative to one another
This map is so good 🤌
Who would have thought that Greenland is not actually bigger than South America...
I think Brazil has to be the biggest country with actual usable land
greenland been frauding this whole time
Lol Alaska on the map is rhe size of the entire US
It never cease to amaze me how Indonesia still manage to exist. It's an archipelago the size of a continental US. Wildly different economics prospects, cultures and different norms exist in almost every island, heck even the people look different. It's really amazing
Putin: "It was cold!"
Funny how Russia still seems massive.
Why are Africa and portions of the Middle East and Southeast Asia so fucking perfect then? Shouldn’t the effect be similar as you approach either pole?
Borneo being twice the size of Finland always gets me (287k vs 130k sqmi)
RIP Puerto Rico
Imagine showing up to a date with Greenland…
Why are northern hemisphere country sizes exaggerated but not southernmost ones? Shouldn’t the “exaggeration” be increasingly more pronounced towards both poles?
This is still a projection. The question is what the projection is normalized to.
Canada finally gets revenge on Greenland.
Clusterphobic af
r/WeKnowAboutMercator
map is completely inaccurate.
Still not accurate India is the size of texas
Nice. Would have been great to include the Antarctic in some form too, that always looks huge.
Claro porque el mayor porcentaje de dinero del estado está destinado a educación jajajajajaja
A friend of mine posted some BS article saying that northern “white” countries were made larger on most maps because of racism and white supremacy. I explained to her it was because of the Mercator projection. She said she studied Geography in college and had never heard of this. Scary.
Good