2927: Alphabetical Cartogram

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Alphabetical Cartogram

Title text: Poor Weeoming.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by an SUSPICIOUSLY SMALLER-THAN-USUAL BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

This comic shows a map of the United States, with every state resized based on where it appears in an alphabetical list of states. Hence Alabama is the largest state, Wyoming is the smallest.

#	States by Size	States Alphabetically
1	Alaska	Alabama
2	Texas	Alaska
3	California	Arizona
4	Montana	Arkansas
5	New Mexico	California
6	Arizona	Colorado
7	Nevada	Connecticut
8	Colorado	Delaware
9	Oregon	Florida
10	Wyoming	Georgia
11	Michigan	Hawaii
12	Minnesota	Idaho
13	Utah	Illinois
14	Idaho	Indiana
15	Kansas	Iowa
16	Nebraska	Kansas
17	South Dakota	Kentucky
18	Washington	Louisiana
19	North Dakota	Maine
20	Oklahoma	Maryland
21	Missouri	Massachusetts
22	Florida	Michigan
23	Wisconsin	Minnesota
24	Georgia	Mississippi
25	Illinois	Missouri
26	Iowa	Montana
27	New York	Nebraska
28	North Carolina	Nevada
29	Arkansas	New Hampshire
30	Alabama	New Jersey
31	Louisiana	New Mexico
32	Mississippi	New York
33	Pennsylvania	North Carolina
34	Ohio	North Dakota
35	Virginia	Ohio
36	Tennessee	Oklahoma
37	Kentucky	Oregon
38	Indiana	Pennsylvania
39	Maine	Rhode Island
40	South Carolina	South Carolina
41	West Virginia	South Dakota
42	Maryland	Tennessee
43	Hawaii	Texas
44	Massachusetts	Utah
45	Vermont	Vermont
46	New Hampshire	Virginia
47	New Jersey	Washington
48	Connecticut	West Virginia
49	Delaware	Wisconsin
50	Rhode Island	Wyoming

Looks more like the states were listed alphabetically and sizes were adjusted to match that ranking. States beginning with ‘A’ are biggest and states beginning with ’W’ are tiny.

This is likely in reference to a recent [[study] https://record.umich.edu/articles/study-alphabetical-order-of-surnames-may-affect-grading/#:~:text=Wang%20said%20students%20whose%20surnames,creating%20a%200.6%2Dpoint%20gap.]from the University of Michigan showing that having a last name that the alphabetical order of surnames leads to differences in grading

The title text is a diminutive of Wyoming, making fun of how small it is on this map.

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.

A More Fair Map

Instead of giving more area to larger states, this map improves fairness by sizing the states alphabetically.

[A labeled map of the United States where states are resized based on their alphabetic order]

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Discussion

replaced incorrect explanation 172.70.111.45 17:17, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Is it me or is Hawaii strangely bigger than california. -- 172.70.100.40 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I think he's only counting the land area. The area between the islands may be creating an illusion that Hawaii is bigger. It's hard to tell just by looking, does anyone have the tech to measure this? P.S. remember to sign... Barmar (talk) 14:11, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Im just wondering why Maine is still so big.... JushJosh (talk) 13:22, 1 May 2024 (UTC)Jush

I know, right? That's what made me think it wasn't just a simple alphabetical listing. That, and Hawaii is bigger than Alaska, despite the fact that Alaska is substantially higher on the list. In fact, it even appears that Alaska is smaller than Maine! How did Randall decide on the sizes??? Pie Guy (talk) 16:01, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

The sad part is that Rhode Island grew. 172.71.31.139 14:01, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

I believe it is some sort of ranking rather than swapping sizes as the chart suggests, as South Carolina appears to be smaller than normal (?) Primmy (talk) 14:56, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Poor Utah :( If you click on this you will get a fun surprise (talk) 15:15, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

I believe the first paragraph is incorrect. I did a full comparison, and Texas shrank the most (dropping 41 places from size ranking to alphabetical ranking), while Connecticut as well as Delaware grew the most (each rising 41 places between the lists). 172.71.255.28 15:40, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

This map gives a lot more land to Mexico. Weslar (talk) 16:31, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Mexico is not represented at all in the map. And all states are much smaller than in reality (unless you have a very big monitor, c.f. 2911) --172.71.160.32 12:30, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

I think Weslar is saying that Mexico gains land, since (historically) it has everything south of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. (Source: Just visited the Alamo a couple weeks ago, on an eclipse vacation...) So the fact that the states are smaller makes Texas bigger. (talk)

UNFORTUNATELY it seems that there are many errors in the actual relationship of sizes. I did a quick area take off of each state. These units are in miles using the real width of Colorado (since it is about the same place in the list) as the scale reference. https://imgur.com/a/hKIVjRZ. you can see immediately that Delaware and Alaska and Iowa are incorrect in the order.

Ignoring the Errors in the map and Assuming We are keeping the total area of the US the same and scaling the new map based on this total... then Alaska loses the most land area ( approx 510,000 mi) and Alabama gains the most Land area (156,000 mi). Looking at which state gained or lost the largest percentage of its land area shows that Minnesota is the least affected at only 4.6% or 4,200 mi and Wyoming is the most affected losing 98% of its land area or 95,000 miles.162.158.41.56

As a Wyomingite, I can't complain. We're still bigger than our population justifies. (fun fact, we get two whole senators despite lacking the population to actually justify a single house member)172.68.34.59 17:08, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Alaska is STILL disproportionally small. Fabian42 (talk) 17:24, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Utah is way too big (should be after Texas) and Idaho is too small (should be bigger than the Ms)

Why the hell is Massachusetts so BIG?! Psychoticpotato (talk) 13:01, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

To account for all its Mass. 172.71.242.175 13:51, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

I should've seen that coming. Psychoticpotato (talk) 15:40, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

I went further and measured the exact sizes of each state to the pixel: https://imgur.com/a/d6ruHvs really nerd sniped myself lol. The post includes excel screenshots as well as text, and the image I used at the bottom. Will explain methodology if anyone wants. Obviously all these discrepancies are due to the fact that the states actually have to fit together for the joke-map to work. Paintadot (talk) 13:48, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Having the pixel area for each state in the explanation would be really nice! Do you count the "border pixels" (or maybe half of them) to the pixel area? (not sure if that would be sufficient to have Alaska stay atop of Arizona ...) --172.71.160.32 14:39, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

As drawn, the borders vary significantly in width. Usually 2 pixels wide, but often 3 or more. Between states, I divided them evenly to the best of my judgment. For the outer borders of the lower 48, Hawai'i, and Alaska, I added roughly one outer pixel. It's possible it could be done better, but it's kind of subjective anyway. Nevertheless it seems a lot of us agree that it's an interesting thing to try to measure. I imagine it was a lot of fun for Randall to try to balance his stated goal with keeping the shapes of the states more or less correct :) Paintadot (talk) 16:16, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

I was going to take some time to establish 'drawn areas', myself (perhaps work out if it were contained area, 'hull' area, one-axis scale, etc) and add the likiest metric in the "Alphabetic" group of columns (remember to re-colspan!), but looks like like you've got that covered... 172.71.102.254 15:10, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

"I was going to take some time to establish 'drawn areas" --- When I was a boy, they had planimeters. You run the pointer around your figure and it computes area with two wheels. Magic? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMvEOmpy8Kw Among other chores, they computed the area of the PV diagram of a steam engine. --PRR (talk) 20:08, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Magic or an application of Green's theorem :) --198.41.242.211 12:00, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

I modified the table to include the data I gathered (https://imgur.com/a/d6ruHvs). I hope that's okay. This is my first contribution ^^' Paintadot (talk) 16:15, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

What definition of 'fair' is Randall using? --NeatNit (talk) 15:04, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Number 3 172.71.102.254 15:10, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

replaced incorrect explanation 172.70.230.172 20:30, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

The title is written weirdly (to me): "a more fair map". Wouldn't "a fairer map" be more usual? Does anyone know if this phrasing is a reference to something that I'm not getting? --172.69.79.191 23:10, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Randall talks about the distortion from various map projections time and time again. Is there a chance that the pixel by pixel analysis that has been performed by us is overlooking the impact of map projection distortion? Ianrbibtitlht (talk) 23:09, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

O_O Well. That is a fantastic point. It doesn't seem likely that Randall would choose a projection that messes up the entire point of the comic, and the compromise of making the lower 48 fit together is still likely to have been a factor. But I will definitely look into this today and get back to y'all. We can actually figure out the projection, or get close, since the N-S E-W borders are not at parallel to the x and y axes. So it's not Mercator - but duh that would never happen - but it's also not an imaginary "projection" that keeps the borders on the x and y axes but is also somehow equal area. Alaska, oddly, is rotated so its N-S border IS on the y axis. Hawai'i, meanwhile, has been rotated so it's counter clockwise relative to both the axes and to whatever the lower 48 are on. This seems to be so that it fits snugly under the lower 48.Paintadot (talk) 07:37, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Now I feel like I've nerd-sniped you in the worst way! Sorry. Ianrbibtitlht (talk) 15:08, 7 May 2024 (UTC)