Difference between revisions of "Category:Bad Map Projections"

This series began in January 2017, and that it was a series became clear when it got its second installment in February 2017. But then it took three years until the third came in January 2020. The fourth came a year and a half later in July 2021.

Randall has been into maps for a long time on xkcd. Especially he focused on map projections, which are various ways to show the Earth on a flat surface, as in 977: Map Projections. This is not possible to do without distortion because the Earth is not flat.^{[citation needed]}

A long time after releasing that comic, which did not say the projections were bad, but clearly showed how different Earth's countries looks in different maps, he continues the list of projections (well, with Bad Map Projections he made himself) in what turned out to be a series, of four comics so far.

However, these projections are not real projections, and they are all named "Bad Map Projection: (Name)". They even get a number, which if taken seriously would mean there are 353 other unreleased bad map projections at least. So far they have the following numbers (listed in number order rather than release order; the first two were released in the opposite order, as were the last two).

#79: Time Zones

#107: The Liquid Resize

#248: Madagascator

#299: The Greenland Special

#358: South America

This may give promise of several more bad projections. So far, the first two have been released using a similar six color scheme, like a political map with each country in a different color than its closest neighbors. But the other two were just plain black, gray and and white.