![]() ![]() ![]() Gott drew a comparison to Olympic high jumpers: In 1968, Dick Fosbury shocked sports fans by arching his back and jumping over the bar backwards. Strebe via Wikimedia CommonsĬlearly, a completely new approach was needed. “A map that is good at one thing may not be good at depicting other things.” The Mercator projection, popular on classroom walls and used as the basis for Google maps, is excellent at depicting local shapes, but it distorts surface areas so badly near the North and South Poles that polar regions are usually simply chopped off. “One can’t make everything perfect,” said Gott, who is also a 1973 graduate alumnus of Princeton. The lower the score, the better: a globe would have a score of 0.0. In 2007, Goldberg and Gott invented a system to score existing maps, quantifying the six types of distortions that flat maps can introduce: local shapes, areas, distances, flexion (bending), skewness (lopsidedness) and boundary cuts (continuity gaps). “This is a map you can hold in your hand,” Gott said. Why not have a two-sided map that shows both sides of the globe? It breaks away from the limits of two dimensions without losing any of the logistical convenience - storage and manufacture - of a flat map. Like many radical developments, it seems obvious in hindsight. Their new map is two-sided and round, like a phonograph record or vinyl LP. Richard Gott, an emeritus professor of astrophysics at Princeton and creator of a logarithmic map of the universe once described as “arguably the most mind-bending map to date” Robert Vanderbei, a professor of operations research and financial engineering who created the “ Purple America ” map of election results and David Goldberg, a professor of physics at Drexel University. ![]() Now, a fundamental re-imagining of how maps can work has resulted in the most accurate flat map ever made, from a trio of map experts: J. Richard Gott, Robert Vanderbei and David Goldberg How do you flatten a sphere?įor centuries, mapmakers have agonized over how to accurately display our round planet on anything other than a globe. ![]() Known as the Winkel Tripel projection, and used by National Geographic for its world maps, it minimizes distortion to area, direction, and distance.Video by J. Source: /jPeCnOOkEG- Simon Kuestenmacher February 16, 2021įrom the maps we have already, the best all-rounder is a compromise. Areas along the equator stay much the same of course. A great visual way of understanding the distortion of maps. Overlaying hundreds of maps at a time shows just how distorted the world gets when map makers try to flatten out the globe, as data scientist Michael Freeman, from the University of Washington Information School, reveals in this interactive visualization:įun interactive tool by allows us to overlay hundreds of map projections at a time. Some world maps are designed to preserve the shape of countries (called Lambert Conformal Conic projections), whereas other maps – those globes that bulge at the equator – preserve area these are Mollweide projections. "We believe it is the most accurate flat map of Earth yet," the researchers wrote when they published their methods on preprint website arXiv ahead of peer-review. The trio set out to make a flat map with the least error possible after creating a system to score existing maps on how lopsided or skewed they are, and how much areas and distances on the maps were bent out of shape. Richard Gott, who designed the new spread with mathematician Robert Vanderbrei and physicist David Goldberg from Drexel University in Philadelphia. "We're proposing a radically different kind of map," said Princeton University astrophysicist J. It's round, not unlike Earth, but also flat like a pancake – in an attempt to give us a less distorted view of the world. Last year, a group of researchers revealed their reimagined version of the planet in a double-sided map. More than just a classroom squabble, it's a reflection of how maps can shape how we view and understand the world. ![]()
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