Map Projections

I've just watched this short video: Mercator Projection Banned in 55 Countries. Africa has decided it has had enough of being misrepresented in the most common map of the world as being substantially smaller than it really is.

I've previously written about Maps and Mental Models. It links to a twelve minute video about Oceania.

All mental models are wrong. Some are useful.

All maps are wrong. They have different uses. The Mercator Projection was designed to serve sailors back when sailing ships had sails.

Many people have no idea how much the development of long distance transportation shaped various things on planet Earth. For example:

1. The need to solve the longitude problem for sailing ships led to the pocket watch.

2. Train travel led to standardized time zones. Prior to that, noon local time was whenever the sun was directly overhead. This didn't play well with travel schedules.

3. Zulu time is an artifact of plane travel because jets go too fast to make standard time zones a good thing in the air.

Anyway, the Mercator Projection presumably became the standard because sailing was a big deal. They prioritized a particular element of the map to serve the needs of sailors.

There is an inherent problem with maps: They are a two-dimensional (flat) representation of a three-dimensional object (Earth). 

If you want a more accurate representation, you use a globe. In World War II, Roosevelt and Churchill had identical 50 inch globes to help them coordinate their war efforts prior to the Internet.

The Earth is not actually perfectly spherical. If you are only going to represent one section of the planet, there are sometimes preferred projections because certain projections are better for certain aspects of this misshapen ball of mud called Earth. For example, there are preferred projections for showing just the USA.

And Africa is supposedly being gradually pulled apart thanks to plate tectonics, so odds are high that Africa will need to stay on top of the map issue because of a changing physical landscape.