Editing 977: Map Projections

 

{{w|Map projection}}, or how to represent the spherical Earth surface onto a flat support (paper, screen...) to have a usable map, is a long-time issue with very practical aspects (navigation, geographical shapes and masses visualization, etc.) as well as very scientific/mathematical ones, involving geometry or even abstract algebra among other things. There is no universal solution to this problem, any 2D map projection will always distort in a way the spherical reality; many projections have been proposed in various contexts, each intending to minimize distortions for specific uses (for nautical navigation, for aerial navigation, for landmass size comparisons, etc.) but having drawbacks from other points of view. Some of them are more frequently used than other in mass media and therefore more well-known than others, some are purely historical and now deprecated, some are really obscure, etc.

[[Randall]] suggests here the idea that someone's "favorite" map projection can reveal aspects of their personality, and goes through a series of them and what they can mean:

:The {{w|Mercator projection}} was introduced by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569. The main purpose of this map is that at any point the vertical and horizontal scales are the same, so locally i.e. considering only a small part of the map, geographical features (shapes, angles) are well represented, which helps a lot in recognizing them on-the-field, or for local navigation in that small part only. For this reason that projection (or a close variant) is used in several online mapping services such as Google Maps, which means that people commonly see it nowadays. No angle distortion also means that a straight line on the map corresponds to a course of constant bearing (direction), which was very useful for nautical navigation in the past (and thus made that projection very well-known).

:However from a global point of view, this projection is radically incorrect in how it shows the size of landmasses (for instance Antarctica or Greenland seem gigantic), and furthermore, it always excludes a small region around each pole (otherwise the map would be of infinite height), so it doesn't provide a complete solution for the problem of map projection. The comic implies that people who like that projection aren't very interested with map issues, and typically use what they are offered without thinking a lot about it.

:The {{w|Van der Grinten projection}} is not much better than the Mercator. It was adopted by {{w|National Geographic}} in 1922 and was used until they updated to the Robinson projection in 1988.

:The {{w|Robinson projection}} was developed by {{w|Arthur H. Robinson}} as a map that was supposed to look nice and is often used for classroom maps. National Geographic moved to this projection in 1988, and used it for ten years, moving to the Winkel-Tripel in 1998.

:{{w|The Beatles}} was a rock band that enjoyed great commercial success in the 1960s. The Beatles, coffee, and running shoes suggest an ordinary, easygoing lifestyle paralleled by the projection.

:Also called the Fuller Map, the {{w|Dymaxion Map}} takes a sphere and projects it onto an icosahedron, that is a polyhedron with 20 triangular faces. It is far easier to unwrap an icosahedron than it is to unwrap a sphere into a 2D object and has very little skewing of the poles.

:*{{w|XML}} is the eXtensible Markup Language. It is used to represent data in a format that machines can read and understand, as well as being human-readable. In practice, XML is cumbersome to read.

:*{{w|Vibram FiveFingers|Toed-Shoes}} are a [[1065|favorite]] of Randall's to pick on. In society they are seen as a {{w|geek}} clothing item.

:*Brought to the world by {{w|Dean Kamen}}, the {{w|Segway PT}} was supposed to be a device that changed the way cities were built. In reality, most principalities have put in place rules specifically against Segways, making them a frustration to own and use within the law (in some states in Australia, it is illegal to use them on public footpaths or roads). Also, the former owner of {{w|Segway Inc.}}, the late {{w|Jimi Heselden}}, accidentally rode his Segway off a cliff in 2010.

:*{{w|Virtual reality|3D goggles}} are a very niche market only pursued by enthusiasts. In the 1990s the promise of virtual realities was very tantalizing; many companies attempted to perfect it, but fell short of the mark. Also, the phrase "The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence." is relevant.

:*{{w|Dvorak Simplified Keyboard|Dvorak}} is an alternate keyboard layout to QWERTY. Where QWERTY was invented to help keep manual typewriters from jamming (by placing the most used keys further away from each other), Dr. {{w|August Dvorak}} performed many studies and found the mathematically optimal keyboard layout to reduce finger travel for right handed typists. While technically better than QWERTY, QWERTY had become the standard. All the keyboards were laid out in QWERTY format, and retraining the brain after becoming a touch typist is extremely difficult.

:Proposed by {{w|Oswald Winkel}} in 1921, this map tried to reduce the three (German: tripel) main problems with map projections: area, direction, and distance. The {{w|Kavrayskiy VII projection|Kavrayskiy projection}} is very similar to the Winkel Tripel and was used by the USSR, but very few in the Western world know of it.

:The comic links this projection to {{w|hipster}} subculture. The whole point of hipsters is to avoid conforming to mainstream fashions. "Post-" refers to a variety of musical genres such as {{w|post-punk}}, {{w|post-grunge}}, {{w|post-minimalism}}, etc. that branch off of other genres.

:The {{w|Goode homolosine projection}} takes a different approach to skewing a sphere into a roughly circular surface. An orange peel can be taken off of an orange and flattened with fair success; this is roughly the procedure that {{w|John Paule Goode}} followed in creating this projection.

:Common people make arguments that if normal people would run the United States, then the US wouldn't be in the trouble it is. This is from the belief that career politicians are simply out to make money and will only act in the interest of their constituency when their continued easy life is threatened (usually around election time).

:Airline food is another, much maligned, problem. How do you store enough food to feed people on long airplane trips? The common solution is to use some kind of sub-standard microwaveable dinner. Randall is saying that the people in favor of the Goode Homolosine wonder why the airlines don't simply order meals from the restaurants in the airport, store that food, and serve it, rather than using frozen and microwaved food.

:All of these references suggest that people who like the Goode Homolosine projection are fans of easy solutions to problems. However, the solutions would not necessarily work in practice. For instance, the restaurants might have trouble making enough food for the whole plane, and it could get cold before being served. Also, the air conditions [http://www.nbcnews.com/health/one-reason-airline-food-so-bad-your-own-tastebuds-6C10823522 aboard planes] can affect taste, so airlines say they optimize for this.

:The {{w|Hobo–Dyer projection}} was commissioned by Bob Abramms and Howard Bronstein and was drafted by Mick Dyer in 2002. It is a modified {{w|Behrmann projection}}. The goal was to be a more visually pleasing version of the Gall-Peters.

:As is discussed in the Gall-Peters explanation, the Gall-Peters was developed to be equal area, so that economically disadvantaged areas can at least take comfort in the fact that their country is represented correctly by area on maps.

:Randall associates the Hobo-Dyer projection to "crunchy granola" — a stereotype associated with vegetarianism, environmental activism, anti-war activism, liberal political leanings, and some traces of {{w|hippie}} culture.

:With the new general acceptance of homosexual, bisexual, and transgendered persons, some have begun to invent gender-neutral pronouns so that when referring to a person whose gender is not known they cannot be offended by being referred to by the wrong pronouns. In {{w|Middle English}} 'they' and 'their' were accepted gender-less pronouns that could replace 'he', 'she' as well as be used to represent a crowd, but this usage is considered by some to be just straight-up wrong because of the plural/singular debate ([http://www.merriam-webster.com/video/0033-hisher.htm stupid Victorian Grammarians!]). So, a whole host of new pronouns are being invented in an attempt to keep from ever offending anyone ever again.

;Plate Carrée

:Also known as the {{w|Equirectangular projection}} that has been in use since, apparently, 100 AD. The benefit of this projection is that latitude and longitude can be used as x,y coordinates. This makes it especially easy for computers to graph data on top of it.

:According to the comic, the projection appeals to people who find much beauty in simplicity.

:To quote ''{{w|The Princess Bride}}'': "Yes, you're very smart. Shut up."

:Similar to the Dymaxion, the {{w|Waterman butterfly projection}} turns a sphere into an octahedron, and then unfolds the net of the octahedron, which was devised by mathematician {{w|Waterman polyhedron|Steve Waterman}} based upon the work of {{w|Bernard J.S. Cahill}}

:Bernard Cahill published a [http://www.genekeyes.com/B.J.S._CAHILL_RESOURCE.html butterfly map] in 1909. Steve Waterman probably has the only extant "ready to go" map following the same general principles, though Gene Keys may not be far behind. Waterman has a poem with graphics in a similar vein to this xkcd comic that is worth reading.[http://watermanpolyhedron.com/worldmap.html]

:The Cahill/Keyes/Waterman projections are arguably the only map projections, thus far, that more or less equally balance the inevitable “all maps lie” distortions in size, shape and area.

:The {{w|Pierce quincuncial projection}} was devised by {{w|Charles Sanders Peirce}} in 1879 and uses {{w|complex analysis}} to make a {{w|conformal mapping}} of the Earth, that conforms except for four points which would make up the south pole.

:{{w|Inception}} was a 2010 movie about {{w|meta}} {{w|lucid dream}}ing. It has a complex story that is difficult to follow and leaves the viewer with many questions at the end, and almost needs to be watched multiple times to be understood.

:The human brain is not well developed to deal with oddly obvious things. One example is that everyone has a skeleton, but everyone is surprised when a bone pokes through the skin after it has been broken. Another is the fascinating complexity of the human hand, a machine that is amazingly complex driven by a complex interplay of electrical and chemical signals and yet is the size of the hand and is so useful.

:The {{w|Gall-Peters projection}} is mired in controversy, surprising for a map. {{w|James Gall}} a 19th century clergyman presented this projection in 1855 before the {{w|British Association for the Advancement of Science}}. In 1967, the filmmaker {{w|Arno Peters}} created the same projection and presented it to the world as a "new invention" that put poorer, less powerful countries into their rightful proportions (as opposed to the Mercator). Peters played the marketing game and got quite a few followers of his map by saying it had "absolute angle conformality," "no extreme distortions of form," and was "totally distance-factual" in an age when society was very concerned about social justice. All of these claims were in fact false. The polar regions are horribly distorted, and south of the Mediterranean Sea is "taller" than it should be.

The title text makes a joke that goes to the familiar meme from ''{{w|CSI: Miami}}'', in which the star, David Caruso starts on sentence, then [[:Category:Puts on sunglasses|puts on his sunglasses]] and then ends it with a corny pun. In this case the pun is on {{w|map projection}} and {{w|projection (psychology)|projection}} in psychology This internet meme has been mentioned previously by xkcd in comic [[626]] and possibly others.

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