Comments on: We Don’t Know Jack About the World – Alisa Miller TED Talk

By: resonanteye

resonanteye — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:52:16 +0000

That’s a great way to express the amount of coverage.

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 10:56:31 +0000

The following web page shows a number of different projections. From 1988 to 1998, National Geographic used the Robinson Projection, but for the past decade they’ve used the Winkel Tripel Projection.

http://www.diversophy.com/petersmap.htm

By: Nathan Yau

Nathan Yau — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 22:55:15 +0000

@Everyone – ah, right. cartogram. i knew someone would know. thanks, all.

@Liam – I’ve heard that a lot about the mercator projection. what other projections do you recommend? unfortunately, no one’s answered this question for me yet :(

By: Liam

Liam — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:22:55 +0000

This makes quite a nice comparison with the inaccuracies of the standard mercator projection used in most schools. This shows the size of north America grossly out of proportion with it’s real size, much as the news coverage does.

By: frets

frets — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 14:43:56 +0000

I should've clicked before I typed: Cart and Mapresso seem to fit the bill nicely.

By: frets

frets — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 14:27:13 +0000

That is fantastic! I’d love to know how she generated that…what a useful tool.

By: Robert Kosara

Robert Kosara — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 10:47:15 +0000

It's called a Cartogram. While it works well to show a few (overwhelming) data points like here, it's unfortunately used for a lot of data where it really doesn't tell you much.

By: Moritz Stefaner

Moritz Stefaner — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 10:31:46 +0000

Nice one! The maps look like the ones on worldmapper Concerning the naming: At their about page, they are refered to as density-equalising maps with the following paper reference: Michael T. Gastner and M. E. J. Newman (2004) Diffusion-based method for producing density equalizing maps Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 101, 7499-7504.