Mercator Projection
I used to have a professor who ranted (seemingly at random moments in a lecture) that “the map is NOT the territory, people!”
At the time I didn’t care too much what the heck he meant because those inane ramblings never showed up on final exams. Many years later however, I find that this is some of the most useful information I got from my undergraduate time spent. The gist of the message (as I’m interpreting it now) is that the effort of creating a representation of a real-life situation will always result in bias.
This is why there has been so much research into the validity of eye-witness testimony…because while it seem simple that someone on the scene should be able to relay what they saw and what they heard in order to provide an objective account; the truth is that eye-witness testimony is often unreliable.
So today’s lesson is about the subjectivity of reality based on how it’s measured! (yay for subjectivity!)
“The map is not the territory” is nowhere more clear than in how maps are made. Way back in the 1500′s Flemish geographer Gerardus Mercator came up with the most commonly-used method for displaying a sphere (the earth) in two dimensions (on a map). The problem is that most of us (certainly I) grew up believing that the map represented what was true about the earth! Here are some differences:
- Greenland is presented as having roughly as much land area as Africa, when in fact Africa’s area is approximately 14 times greater than Greenland.
- Alaska is presented as having similar or even slightly more land area than Brazil, when Brazil’s area is actually more than 5 times that of Alaska.
- Finland appears with a greater north-south extent than India, although India’s is the greater.
Additionally, the maps I grew up looking at (and still look at) show north at the top. North, of course, is an arbitrary direction associated with one of the two points of the axis on which the earth turns. There is, of course, no “up” in space…so representing north at the top of a map is completely arbitrary. Or, as is more likely, completely self-centered. It is SO not coincidental that most maps that school children see in America have the United States at the top center.
My strong recommendation is that you all go online and order yourself a map with Australia at the top center. Spend some time studying the map. What do you notice that maybe you haven’t noticed before? Personally I don’t think I had ever noticed the Kamchatka Peninsula before but on my revised Australia-centric map, it stands out quite prominently.
The point here is that the choice we make to display or represent a situation will include bias whether we want it to or not. Next time you look at a map or a bar chart or a flow chart or ANY graphic representation…what questions will you ask that help you understand the bias?
~Geek~
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment