the importance of accurate maps

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the importance of accurate maps

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1reading_fox
Bewerkt: mei 4, 2010, 8:58 am

BBC link.

"But throughout history, maps have usually been more interested in providing people with that basic sense of security, before trying to get them from A to B. Each society tends to get the world map they deserve, one which manages to summarise and define a particular society's hopes and fears, prejudices and beliefs.

Throughout time, different cultures produced radically different images of the world. None of them could be labelled "right" or "wrong", they all simply reflected a culture's preoccupations
"

I'm not convinced by this - but then that's the authors point, ALL maps share this distortion one way or another. However I think there's a difference between choosing a specific distortion because of 3D geometry vs 2D paper, and deliberately adding features that don't exist.

2drbubbles
mei 4, 2010, 9:17 am

I've been to one art museum exhibition of maps, and heard of a couple of others, and they all made those points. They also had a pretty broad definition of "map," more so than I think most of us would ordinarily use. I think it's an interesting idea that, like most interesting ideas, is useful in some cases and not in others.

I would be curious to see how, e.g., National Geographic maps might be shown to embody a particular set of 'cultural preoccupations.' I would also be curious to see whether and how discussions about representation in art might apply to maps.

3andyl
mei 4, 2010, 9:18 am

Have you watched any of the programmes on BBC Four?

I've seen a few of them and they are interesting. Basically the point is that what is being mapped isn't completely geographical or includes the complete geography of the region being mapped. It isn't just a point about choosing the right projection for your map but choosing what to leave out - for example a road map doesn't require the same details that a OS 1:25,000 map does. Also look at the map of the London Underground, one of the more famous maps around, although it accurately maps the network, the distances and above ground positions of the stations don't correlate at all well with the real world (and deliberately so).

4PossMan
mei 4, 2010, 9:32 am

The London Underground map has some similarity to the old electric wiring diagrams like we used to do at school. And it misses out depth information - (the actual) lines can cross without touching because one can go under another. It's a real masterpiece and although it's gone quite a bit of tweaking it's still very close to original version.

Sometimes we get tourist "maps" or publicity leaflets that have a simple map with added features such as a serpent in Loch Ness, a picture of Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon, a castle in Edinburgh etc. A bit of a throw-back to the old sea-monsters added to our oceans.

5thorold
mei 4, 2010, 11:51 am

By coincidence, a fascinating article on hand-drawn maps in Slate: http://www.slate.com/id/2252161/pagenum/all/ - discusses how a map drawn by a person on the back of an envelope for a specific journey can be more useful than Google.

6PossMan
Bewerkt: mei 4, 2010, 2:25 pm

thorold: As you say that's a really interesting article which I've captured to peruse more at leisure. I expect a lot of homegrown maps are along the lines of "how to get to our house" for would-be visitors. And they need to take the visitors knowledge of the area into account. For example in our case "old Hilton hospital" might suit people who've lived here for ages whilst for relatives visiting from a distance it's "big white building straight ahead". And visitors like these often want the easiest route rather than the shortest or the quickest as I found out when my brother-in-law said after what I thought was a fairly clear explanation as to how to get to a nearby historical site "oh we find it's easiest to use the ring road". One of the troubles with Google maps is that "main" roads as they appear on Google are not always perceived as such on the ground. So what appears as a turn-off left on Google may to the driver seem like "follow the main road and ignore the road forking right"

7thorold
mei 4, 2010, 4:14 pm

>6 PossMan:
Yes, it actually turns out to be the tailpiece to a whole series of articles on signs and "wayfinding". Worth looking at if you have time.

Another interesting instance that occurred to me at the bus stop tonight: in our area most of the roads run roughly parallel and perpendicular to the coast. Street maps and the route diagrams of the local bus/tram company are traditionally drawn rotated to make the coast run horizontally across the top of the map (the coast runs roughly SW to NE). This saves having a big blue triangle on one side of the map, and makes the street pattern easier to follow. But it's very difficult to transpose between that familiar design and maps printed out from Google that have North at the top (it's happened to me several times that I've had to help out confused strangers who couldn't work out how to match their printout to the plan at the tram stop). Not to mention that we now have "North at the top" route maps in the bus shelters served by the regional bus operator and "sea at the top" maps at the stops served by the city transport undertaking!

8Garp83
mei 6, 2010, 7:41 am

"Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can't locate the U.S. on a world map. Why do you think this is?"

"I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don't have maps and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future, for our children" -- Caitlin Upton, 2007

9thorold
mei 6, 2010, 5:00 pm

>8 Garp83:
When I see those studies, I tend to wonder whether being able to locate your own country on a map of the world is actually a necessary skill for any practical purpose other than passing school tests and the occasional avoidance of embarrassment? Unless you're the sort of person who gets asked to give talks to primary-school kids when travelling in foreign countries...

I also wonder how they ask the question: are you expected to stick a pin in the map (in which case Americans and Greenlanders have a far better chance of being right than San Marinese and Andorrans), or do they colour in Antigua, Bolivia and Canada and ask you which of them is the USA?

10legallypuzzled
mei 6, 2010, 7:13 pm

>8 Garp83:

Thanks for the reminder about Miss South Carolina. It's sad to see that mapsforus.org is now a spam site, as it used to have maps for all those people, uh, out there in our nation who don't have maps. (It's still in the Internet Archive.)

11Garp83
mei 7, 2010, 6:08 pm

I actually think that geography is highly critical. Not only should you be able to locate your own country, you should be able to locate most of the other countries of the world on a map, especially those that occur on the news frequently.

12Mr.Durick
mei 7, 2010, 6:17 pm

Even eastern Europe?

Robert

13drbubbles
mei 7, 2010, 7:05 pm

I used to be a teaching assistant at a large midwestern public university. The final exam for one class of about 120 included a map of the world, and pupils were asked to label the New World, the Old World, the Atlantic, the Pacific, and any 3 continents. No specific countries: just the largest geographical features of the globe.

O.

M.

G.

14bookblotter
mei 7, 2010, 8:13 pm

>13 drbubbles:

Are there rough numbers on the results so we can all share your illness? For example, what percentage got them all right? Or, should it be what percentage got them all wrong?

15drbubbles
mei 8, 2010, 9:08 am

This was in the late '90s, so I don't really remember any figures. It was enough to be appalling rather than merely disgusting, though. I'm inclined to say that fewer than 50% got all 7 things correct, but how many fewer I don't remember.

16Garp83
mei 8, 2010, 11:04 pm

By the way, while I place great importance on geography I often disappoint myself when I see a blank map of Africa or the former Soviet central asian republics. There is always room to grow. But I make it a point of consulting maps -- both modern and ancient -- whenever I encounter a country in my reading that I can't visually place in my mind ...

17carptrash
mei 9, 2010, 6:56 pm

I believe that everyone in the world should be able to more or less identify at least 100 countries on a map.
I also have a tee shirt (hand made by my daughter) that proclaims, "There is no why." eek

18thorold
mei 11, 2010, 5:54 am

I wonder a bit about the "100 countries". You're probably thinking of people from the US when you say that, so I imagine you'd also expect them to be able to place 50 US states on the map reasonably accurately, in addition to those 100 countries. In Europe, with 47 or so countries "on the doorstep", we have a bit of a head start, so you'd probably have to set the bar a bit higher. OTOH, you'd also expect most people to be able to identify the major internal subdivisions of at least the bigger countries (Yorkshire, Bavaria, Alsace, Tuscany, but maybe not Seine-et-Marne or Rutland).

19Garp83
mei 11, 2010, 7:35 am

I have never placed all 50 states completely accurately on a US map & I live here! I wouldn't have a number in mind that anyone should achieve, and I certainly couldn't blame someone from outside of Africa for their inability to place all 62 (?) African states on a map. Pacific islands -- I would be very forgiving. However, people should have a rough idea where all world nations are located, even if they can't put them exactly within a dotted line on a blank map. There's no excuse for anyone not knowing where Brazil or Italy or Afghanistan or China or New Zealand are located.

20rebeccanyc
mei 11, 2010, 8:40 am

#19 I have never placed all 50 states completely accurately on a US map & I live here!

I attribute my ability to locate the states to a jigsaw puzzle I had as a young child in which the pieces were the states! There were only 48 states then, or at any rate Alaska and Hawaii were too geographically dispersed to appear on the puzzle.

21drbubbles
mei 11, 2010, 8:52 am

The only way I can name all the states is by imagining a map, starting in one corner (usually Maine, for some reason) and then naming them contiguously. Otherwise some get left out.

22thorold
mei 11, 2010, 9:18 am

I imagine that we are mostly of a generation that grew up using paper maps to plan holidays, walks, car journeys, etc. I often spent evenings crawling around a floor spread with Ordnance maps working out the details of some expedition, and usually finding that some vital stage went just off the edge of the sheets I owned. Nowadays we have access to almost limitless quantities of maps through the internet, on our GPS receivers, mobile phones, etc., we can zoom in and out at will, but we never get to see an area bigger than the size of the screen in one go. I wonder how much that has affected our perception of the world, and how it will affect the next generation that never bothers with paper maps at all?

23reading_fox
mei 11, 2010, 9:25 am

#22 "Nowadays we have access to almost limitless quantities of maps through the internet, on our GPS receivers, mobile phones, etc., we can zoom in and out at will, but we never get to see an area bigger than the size of the screen in one go. I wonder how much that has affected our perception of the world"

I do really struggle with this. I don't own a car, and hence travel within the UK by train quite a bit. this seriously effects my mental map of the UK. North South is very much quicker travel than East/West hence I tend to think of towns in their relative travel distances rather than there actual location.

But I still plan expeditions on a big paper map.

24Garp83
mei 11, 2010, 10:15 am

#22 thorold -- excellent point. I like large paper maps and I consult them when travelling. Many people in their 20's can't even use a map this way. A GPS can be almost useless if you are lost in a metro area and lose your bearings, and it is really disorienting not to see the whole picture of where you want to be on a map.

25drbubbles
mei 11, 2010, 10:36 am

I've never looked at a GPS thingy, so: can you zoom out with them, like you can on Google Maps? And if so, how far out?

26PossMan
Bewerkt: mei 11, 2010, 2:48 pm

23#, 24#. I'm also a fan of paper maps and in UK especially like the OS Explorer 1:25000 series. My father used to pore over maps at home but once drove from UK to Turkey and according to my mother only once had to look at a map.

I've got a SAT-NAV (GPS) for the car which I rarely use but have found it invaluable in some situations. Eg driving into an unfamiliar town (Perth and Nairn are 2 recent examples), finding a car park; then how to get back? One way streets mean you can't just retrace your tracks and it's not always clear how to get back to the "go home" road. And consulting a paper map isn't always easy at these times.

I've also got a GPS unit meant for walkers/hikers etc which I mainly use for geotagging photographs. Useful if there are no clear topographical features. In UK you can get these to output data according to the Ordnance Survey Grid which correspond to the grid on paper maps (rather than say Latitude/Longitude).

But these devices are secondary and wherever I go I have to have the paper map. By the way reading_foxes mention of trains reminds me that I've seen old maps, basically a strip map, following one of the old coaching roads. Perhaps the Great North Road from London to Edinburgh. A year or so ago I had to travel from Inverness to Canterbury twice in the space of a month. Newspapers and magazines kept me going for a bit but it would have been wonderful to have a strip map telling me what top look out for through the windows. There is for example the "Angel of the North" but if you're not ready for it you'll probably miss it.

27carptrash
mei 11, 2010, 3:21 pm

Regarding an earlier posting and response, my 100 countries was what I'd want anyone in the world to be able to do. That represents roughly half the nations in the world, we (Earth's inhabitants) should (opinion) be able to do that. eek

28amarie
mei 11, 2010, 7:41 pm

You can test yourself on countries of the world and donate some rice at http://www.freerice.com/index.php?&s=Identify%20Countries%20on%20the%20Map. I know I thought I might do reasonably well but was often mistaken. Anything I do get right is probably thanks to "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego" :)

Thank you so much for the link to the Slate article on signs! I am the type of person who reads almost every sign I encounter (and listen to most audible instructions too) and so those with me seem to benefit from such situational awareness (a concept much mentioned by my dad...who also majored in geography...and has an entire file box of saved road maps).

I have no plans to buy a GPS anytime soon and in fact just ordered a whole bunch of AAA maps for the area where I live (in addition to the national atlas I have in the car). I disliked the recent experience of not being able to reverse a Google map's directions from some new destination unexpectedly. Thankfully there were enough signs to get me back on track...

29reading_fox
mei 12, 2010, 6:49 am

#25 - depends a lot on the device.

I've got a SatMap Active 10 - it has digital copies of the OS 1:25000 and 1:50000 maps and after that if you keep zooming out you get to a generic 1:150000 detailless scale. I can zoom out ot see the whole UK, but that's not very useful for anythign other than shifting location.

30PossMan
mei 12, 2010, 7:12 am

#29: Yes mine's a SatMap Active 10 and when I recently upgraded to it from a clunky old Garmin device I decided to splash out on 1:50000 for the whole UK which now comes on a single card. But expect I'll probably get one or two local areas at the higher scale.