“This discussion is not a political discussion [but] a scientific discussion, because there is scientific proof so we all have to accept the reality,” he said.
Bit of a weird statement, haha. Of course it is political, the scientific reality is you cannot perfectly map a sphere to two dimensions… The political part is what we agree to sacrifice, and - in my opinion completely fairly - they want to take “relative land area” off the list of sacrifices.
The map is made by equally dividing a spherical surface into 96 triangles, transferring it to a tetrahedron while maintaining area proportions, and unfolding it in the form of a rectangle: it is a polyhedral map projection. The map reduces the distortion of sizes and shapes of all continents and oceans, as inspired by the Dymaxion map. The projection does not have some of the major distortions of the Mercator projection, like the expansion of countries in far northern latitudes, and allows for Antarctica to be displayed accurately and in whole.[3]
Wow, this map is very interesting and cool! But I must state the obvious: cardinal directions very much lose meaning on this one haha, not even just a little like in some other good candidates :) And yes, we don’t need precise latitudes and longitudes anymore in these days for every-day map use - hence it is even possible to talk about changing to a more “fair” projection - , but looking in a school room at this map and trying to identify with children which direction Mexico is to Cuba becomes non-trivial. This is also a form of sacrifice in this context, which of course is up to discussion.
So you can get a general direction of north/south.
But a “more local” map of even just a hemisphere can still be what we’re familiar with. The issue is how to get 100% of the surface of a sphere onto one flat page.
That problem disappears when zooming in. So using this projection for anything besides the whole planet doesn’t make much sense.
I mean, I’m not saying it’s easy to understand that there’s this for a global map and others for zoomed in maps, especially for an adult. But kids would pick it up quickly and understanding would build abstract thinking skills.
Bit of a weird statement, haha. Of course it is political, the scientific reality is you cannot perfectly map a sphere to two dimensions… The political part is what we agree to sacrifice, and - in my opinion completely fairly - they want to take “relative land area” off the list of sacrifices.
I think it’s preemptively calling it out because Conservatives are absolutely going to make a map projection political
No, we’ve got some pretty good ones…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AuthaGraph_projection
If you try to make one part exact, the errors add up.
If you account for the differences at a small scale, then no area is exact, but everything is pretty much correct.
Wow, this map is very interesting and cool! But I must state the obvious: cardinal directions very much lose meaning on this one haha, not even just a little like in some other good candidates :) And yes, we don’t need precise latitudes and longitudes anymore in these days for every-day map use - hence it is even possible to talk about changing to a more “fair” projection - , but looking in a school room at this map and trying to identify with children which direction Mexico is to Cuba becomes non-trivial. This is also a form of sacrifice in this context, which of course is up to discussion.
The lines curve to the nearest pole.
So you can get a general direction of north/south.
But a “more local” map of even just a hemisphere can still be what we’re familiar with. The issue is how to get 100% of the surface of a sphere onto one flat page.
That problem disappears when zooming in. So using this projection for anything besides the whole planet doesn’t make much sense.
I mean, I’m not saying it’s easy to understand that there’s this for a global map and others for zoomed in maps, especially for an adult. But kids would pick it up quickly and understanding would build abstract thinking skills.