Reflections

It's Bigger than it Looks

When I was still living in Australia, a friend of mine was doing a project for her marketing course and was interviewing arrivals at the Cairns airport in the morning, to ask them about their travel plans going forward. One older Norwegian couple came through and she asked their itinerary. It went something like this.

We are here for eight days, but we are pretty tired from the long flight, so we will rest today at the hotel and by the pool. Tomorrow, we have a trip booked out to the Great Barrier Reef and we will snorkel. After that, we have booked a car and will drive down to Brisbane and then across to Ayers Rock and spend the day and night there, before we drive to Sydney and do a harbour bridge walk. We will then drive back to the Gold Coast for a night, and then back to Cairns before we fly out again.

Upon hearing about the reef trip, my friend had interjected that they will have a great time and it is beautiful. When they said about the drive to Brisbane, her face had started to shift. The trip to Ayers Rock and she realised something has gone very awry. After they had finished telling all the things they had planned, she asked asked again if they were only in Australia for eight days and then once they affirmed, she asked how they planned to fit all the driving in.

What do you mean, we looked at the map and Australia is about the same size as Norway - We have plenty of time.

Australia is 2200% larger than Norway.

Cairns to Brisbane is about 2000 kilometres.
Brisbane to Ayers Rock (Uluru) is 3000 kilometres
Ayers Rock to Sydney is 2900 kilometres
Sydney to Brisbane is 1000 kilometres
And then 2000 again back to Cairns.

That is at least 11,000 kilometres of driving in eight days. (and not much to see on the way between any of those places)

My friend felt obliged to break it to them that the distances weren't possible, but eight days would give them a brilliant holiday in Cairns and the surrounding area, with lots to see.

What if they had a different map?

Last week, The UN voted to start using the Equal Earth projection of the world map instead of the 400-year old Mercator model we are all familiar with. As brilliant as Mercator was to create it, it isn't an accurate representation of the actual land masses. It warps especially the northern hemisphere, making the north look much larger than it is. The equal Earth map gives a more realistic representation.

Mercator:

Equal Earth:

Mercator + Equal Earth

When the UN vote took place, 164 voted for the change to adopt the Equal Earth map. Six countries abstained from the vote. And one country voted against the change.

Can you guess which country voted against it?

Perception of size matters.

The Mercator map is very useful for navigation, but in this day and age, is it still really necessary in the representation of the earth, considering that navigation is directed by GPS and dynamic and zoomable maps that are highly accurate for the purpose. Not changing the map to accurately reflect the size of the earth would be a decision to maintain a fantasy, to perpetuate ignorance, right?

The US voted against it.

Which is no surprise, because it is essentially a global meme as to how poor the average American is at geography, with most unable to get close to identifying on a map even the countries that they are at war with. Choosing continued geographical ignorance in the classroom would seem to be par for the course.

And while this conversation has been in the news this week, it is something that has been relevant for decades, as the conversation about what the perception of countries and land means when the commonly held belief is that they are much larger or smaller than reality. For example, Australia is only slightly smaller (5%) than mainland US, excluding Alaska and Hawaii. Greenland which looks massive on Mercator and about the same size as Africa, is actually a 14th of the size.

Does it matter?

I think so. Though, how much I am not sure. While people can rationally understand sizes and no one uses a world map for navigation, it does set up certain implicit biases that could affect culture and understanding of the place in the world. For instance, if you look at those maps above again, you might notice that while Africa is still in the middle, it draws the eye far more. It is dominant in the frame, whilst the US loses some of its size perception credibility, as it gets pushed further to the left margins and shrunk - while South America gains more attention.

Reality doesn't change.

But Americans need not worry too much about this UN change, because maps and names on maps are what the US government spends a lot of taxpayer money correcting, to ensure that the maps accurately represent the culture. So just like still using a version of the Imperial system (which is British) but is far inferior to the metric system using a ten-base, the US can continue on its merry way, believing what they like about the size of their junk, as long as it doesn't have to be actually compared to that of Africa.

Self-reported is larger than doctor measured.

But if that old Norwegian couple had looked at an Equal Earth map, they likely would have planned quite a different 8 days in Australia. Though, it wouldn't have made nearly as interesting story for my friend.

Taraz [ Gen1: Hive ]

Be part of the Hive discussion.

Comment on the topics of the article, and add your perspectives and experiences.
Read and discuss with others who comment and build your personal network
Engage well with me and others and put in effort

And you may be rewarded.

Comments · 15

@melinda010100(80)· 1d
Great post!

Sending you a Ecency Points tip!
@bozz(83)· 1d
No wonder the orange man wants Greenland, it's uge!
@ducecrypto(71)· 1d
Don't mind my poorly educated compatriots. I think the equal earth model is clearly superior. But what I take issue with is the centering of Africa/Europe in the equal earth model. With an equal earth model, any longitude should be able to be centered in the equal earth model. It does not have to be centered around the GMT line.

I'd be perfectly fine with an equal earth model that centered the Western Hemisphere instead of Africa/Europe. Or create different versions of the equal earth model centering whichever longitude someone wants. I think this would be most useful for everyone to be able to center whichever country they want.
@molometer(72)· 1d
I flew across Australia and it took 8 hours lol. Those Norwegian people were really out of touch with reality.

The UK weather service uses the mercator projection and show the isles as almost vertical whereas in reality the UK is more or less horizontal on the west edge of Europe.

I've always thought this was a bad idea. The north is much colder being closer to the artic circle whereas the south is almost tropical.
@videoaddiction(72)· 1d
I think we often forget how much our perception can be influenced by the way information is presented to us, particularly on social media.
@emmanuel50(69)· 1d
Sometimes we make decisions based on how things look without checking the reality behind them. That Norwegian couple definitely learned that lesson the hard way 😂
@empress-eremmy(76)· 2d
Truth be told I suck at geography too but I do think the overwhelming majority of the World's population could care less...as you rightly observed.

If only the UN was effective in its core duties of maintaining peace between member States
@mortezayousefi(68)· 2d
I like the point that reality does not change but our perception of it can change a lot
@urrirru(65)· 2d
We took a look at the world map... These days, to find out the distance between cities, it’s better to ask Siri.
@riverflows(82)· 2d
If they misread the size of maps, they were absolute muppets.
@owasco(73)· 2d
How did they plan that trip - by themselves, looking at a map?! Who does that anymore?

I go to a place, I stay at that place. Reading mostly. Anything else is not restful, nor is it terribly interesting. I like to dive in, see what it is like to live in a place, not jet off to the next one. That sounds too much like a normal day in my life.

Good story, indeed.
@ryivhnn(73)· 2d
I think my face was doing similar things to your friend's as I was reading through that so I read it out to J and he said THAT'S MORE DRIVING THAN DAYS THEY'RE HERE FOR.

Though I had to double check where I thought Norway was (it is where I thought it was) and I'm still probably missing something but I don't understand how they thought Australia was about the same size. Even using the flat projection and if you stretch and just go across one dimension.

A friend of mine said a lot of Europeans they knew seemed to have no concept of how vast some other countries were as a lot of the European countries you can kind of drive over in like half an hour (may or may not be a slight exaggeration).
@preparedwombat(79)· 2d
Had a somewhat similar experience 30-some years ago when I was involved in the world of international mail art. A guy from Berlin and his friend planned to travel throughout the U.S. visiting with dozens of people he’d traded art with, including me in Minneapolis. When he got to New York I got a call from him saying he’d visit me tomorrow. I said no you won’t, I’ll see you in two or three days.

Three days later, they knocked on my apartment door.

A lot of Europeans seem to have no sense of how large the U.S. is.
@seattlea(78)· 2d
Kind of weird that USA voted against a more accurate representation of the world map... Equal Earth representation actually makes USA bigger, though smaller increase than others get.
@blingit(69)· 2d
i didn't know you used to live down here!

ITs a great country. And that happens SO often. My dad also was chatting to someone on a flight from UK and they said they had hired a rental car at brisbane to drive to Townsville or something... and dad said... oh yes, how many days are you doing that in?

the couple were like... ah.... we check in later tonight... and dad laughed... and said... cancel the rental car and go to the domestic airport its a 15 hour drive! They couldn't believe it.. lol

Distances here are just so vast.

There is a road going out into the centre.. from brisbane to longreach, where we stopped the car in the middle of the HIGHWAY and took photos pretending to be roadkill on the road. lying down in the middle of the highway for a nap... we hadn't seen a car in either direction for like 1 hour. and the road was so straight it just dissapears into the horizon in either direction. When it floods it just turns into a red brown soupy swimming pool.