Why are maps misleading

These include rice alcohol in South Korea and Japan , and drinks made from sugarcane, molasses, and even bananas in African countries like Tanzania. Connect with us. The Mercator Projection In , the great cartographer, Gerardus Mercator, created a revolutionary new map based on a cylindrical projection.

Is Bigger Better? Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form. Sign up. Related Topics: maps world problem cartography mercator. Click for Comments.

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Personal Finance 4 weeks ago. Markets 3 weeks ago. Money 3 weeks ago. Almost all online maps use the Mercator projection, but the projection is used in many static and offline world maps too.

The problem with the Mercator projection is that it distorts areas close to the poles enormously. Greenland in its real location is blown up on a map using the Mercator projection. Check for yourself how Google Maps distorts the shape and area of countries in the north and south of the globe on thetruesize.

Because of these distortions, it is better to avoid the Mercator projection for maps showing areas close to the poles and world maps.

This is the reason why Google Maps decided to switch to an orthographic projection when zooming out to a world view. As a rule of thumb, journalists should try to avoid using the Mercator projection when making world maps.

Good alternatives are the Robinson and Winkel-Tripel projections, or the recently developed Equal Earth projection, which respects areas throughout the whole map. Today's modern web browsers support WebGL , a technology that allows browsers to tap into a computer's graphics card, opening up a whole new range of mapping possibilities.

WebGL makes it possible to rotate maps, tilt the camera view, and visualise data in three dimensions -- it's an exciting new toy. But all these fancy features make it harder for readers to assess the numbers behind a visualisation.

Tilted views make features in the back look smaller, and even hidden or obscured by other features in front of them. And because the camera view can be rotated and flown around, the north is not always up in these maps. This may confuse readers. Let's look at an application of this technology in One belt, one road by The Financial Times. This story uses an animated map of the new Chinese Silk Road, which reacts as the user scrolls through the text.

In this way, different features on the map can be highlighted by zooming and rotating the map to get the best view of each section of the new Silk Road. Although this feature helps step the reader through the story, it also means that North is not always up, which can be confusing for readers unfamiliar with the countries and cities shown on the map. The adoption of WebGL by mapping tools like Mapbox and more recently kepler.

Mapmakers make a lot of design decisions in order to produce clear and useful maps. They leave things out, simplify things, highlight elements and put other elements in the background.

Areas, shapes and lines are distorted and geographical features may be shifted out of place. Sometimes old imagery is used to show where recent events took place, and unlike in the real world the sun is always shining in satellite images. The degrees of freedom in the design of a map are infinite and by changing the size of features, the colours, the layering, the composition and the projection of a map, a different story is told and other distortions are introduced.

This illustrates perfectly another point made by Professor Monmonier: "A single map is but one of an indefinitely large number of maps that might be produced for the same situation or from the same data.

Maps are powerful, but sometimes a misleading picture is generated. Mapmakers, as well as map readers, should be aware of their limitations. So, remember that all maps are a lie.

But these are necessary lies. Join Social Features : allows us to show embedded Tweets Usage Insights : helps us improve the website. Home Read Long Reads The essential lies in news maps. The locator map A good news story answers the '5 W' questions: the who, what, when, where and why of something that happened.

Devastation in Lombok A locator map showing the location of Lombok, part of the introduction of Devastation in Lombok , by Reuters Graphics. Reuters Graphics. The before-after map A map type that is becoming increasingly popular in news stories today is the before-after map. Numbers on maps 'There are lies, damn lies, and statistics,' the saying goes. Lying world maps Probably the biggest and most frequent lie in mapping refers to world maps that use the Mercator projection.

WebGL-based maps Today's modern web browsers support WebGL , a technology that allows browsers to tap into a computer's graphics card, opening up a whole new range of mapping possibilities. An extremely detailed map of the election by The New York Times. Every map is a lie Mapmakers make a lot of design decisions in order to produce clear and useful maps. Additional resources. The essential lies in news maps - "Not only is it easy to lie with maps, it is essential.

Time to have your say. Sign up for our Conversations with Data newsletter Join I agree that my data will be processed for sending me this newsletter. Almost there The most accurate and useful charts provided real-time information of confirmed cases in China and around the world, with figures based on official data from the World Health Organisation, Centers for Disease Control, China National Health Commission and from Chinese government sources. They gave an accurate picture with accompanying methodology at a time when misinformation was spreading as quickly as the virus.

But maps themselves can be misleading, misrepresented and misinterpreted. The study, which was not peer-reviewed, estimated how many people had left Wuhan before the region was locked down. The image they initially tweeted to accompany the study, however, showed global air-traffic routes and travel for the entirety of Screenshots by author. The tweet was hastily deleted and the study reshared without the old image, but not before being misinterpreted and republished by tabloids and television producers around the world, apparently without any semblance of fact checking.

The 3D art was made using hotspot data from 31 days of fires, according to the artist who created it, but it was mistaken for a satellite photograph. The artist r pleaded with social media users not to share his work as accurate. Celebrity Rihanna l shared it with her 96 millions followers.

The graphic demonstrated how easily data visualisation can mislead or be misunderstood, and was one of several misleading images which went massively viral across social media without portraying the truth. While many defended the maps as serving a larger purpose to bring public awareness, others declared some maps were being used to wreak havoc and spread unhelpful viral misinformation. Everyone is now able to create information — and, potentially, misinformation — online. So how much should ordinary citizens reflect on their responsibility for what they shared?

And the possible consequences when information is misrepresented? What data they used. There are some crucial questions and considerations which anyone can apply when they see a map shared online. Cartographers have always been presented with the same impossible dilemma of projecting a three-dimensional object the earth onto a two-dimensional surface. Sometimes people forget about this.

One of the most famous examples, The Mercator projection — created in and still widely-used today by almost all online map providers including Google Maps — distorts land masses depending on their position relative to the equator.