Something that should have been done a long time ago

[Tripnsweep]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/world/africa/africa-map-mercator.html

Even when I was in college people were railing about how outdated this was. It never made sense why we keep it. 

[ionel]

[mspart]

Who could look at a world map and think that Africa is small.   Way bigger than Australia and Europe and South America and North America.   Only Asia would be bigger.   

Crazy

mspart

[Tripnsweep]

1 hour ago, mspart said:

Who could look at a world map and think that Africa is small.   Way bigger than Australia and Europe and South America and North America.   Only Asia would be bigger.   

Crazy

mspart

Well you can blame the map companies. Most geographers don't like it because it's inaccurate. 

[mspart]

The map companies use lat and long to place the land masses appropriately.   So what is a better way to represent a globe on a 2d piece of paper?  And keep lat and long in straight lines and easily discerned?

mspart

[red viking]

1 hour ago, mspart said:

The map companies use lat and long to place the land masses appropriately.   So what is a better way to represent a globe on a 2d piece of paper?  And keep lat and long in straight lines and easily discerned?

mspart

It depends on purpose of the map. Different maps for different purposes. For casual purposes, people typically prefer the land mass sizes to be proportional. EVERY 2D map of the globe has some type of distortion. Only an issue though for maps showing huge areas. 

Edited August 20 by red viking