explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2613: Bad Map Projection: Madagascator

2022-05-02T01:57:44Z

Omgwtfargh: Undo revision 231698 by 162.158.107.230 (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2613
| date = April 29, 2022
| title = Bad Map Projection: Madagascator
| image = bad_map_projection_madagascator.png
| titletext = The projection's north pole is in a small lake on the island of Mahé in the Seychelles, which is off the top of the map and larger than the rest of the Earth's land area combined.
}}

==Explanation==
This is another comic in the [[:Category:Bad Map Projections|Bad Map Projections]] series. This time, Randall used the classic {{w|Mercator projection}} but instead of placing the North Pole on top and the South Pole on the bottom it is oriented so that the top is the island of {{w|Mahé, Seychelles|Mahé}}. The map projection is technically a {{w|Oblique Mercator projection}}, with an unusual choice of the cylinder's axis. Since the Mercator projection tends to visually distort areas near the top and bottom of the resulting map, this gives some areas, notably Madagascar, very unusual shapes.

The Mercator projection became the standard projection for world maps during the 1800s because it is ''conformal of normal aspect'': a {{w|rhumb line}} is displayed as a straight line in a Mercator map. During the age of sail, when navigation was performed by compass - this was a very valuable feature, since one could plot a course between two locations by measuring the direction from one to another on the map and then accounting for the difference between the magnetic and actual north poles to determine which rhumb should be taken. In the mid-20th century this trend was {{w|Mercator_projection#Criticism|criticized}} because the distortion towards the north and south poles gave an inaccurate impression of relative sizes. The most common example given of this distortion is that on a Mercator map of the world Greenland looks to have more area than Africa, when in real life Africa covers 14 times that of Greenland. Thus the reference to making Madagascar larger in this projection. Madagascar is a large island off the south east coast of the main African continent, but has only a quarter the coverage of Greenland. Greenland is often listed as the largest island in the world (which excludes continents in their own right, e.g. Australia) followed by New Guinea, Borneo and then Madagascar in fourth place.

Mahé, mentioned in the title text as the north pole's new location, is the largest island in Seychelles, with an area of 60.7 square miles. The claim in the title text that it is "larger than the rest of the Earth's land area combined", is an understatement, since the poles in the Mercator projection are infinitely far away the area occupied by Mahé in this projection is infinite. However no part of Mahé is visible on the comic.

Clicking on the actual comic will open a website that displays Mercator projections with a pole in any chosen location, with the location of the one opened set to Mahé. The chosen pole is (infinitely far to) the right of the screen, while its {{w|antipodes|antipode}} is on the left. With this, it is possible to see that the island is indeed larger than the rest of the map's land area combined, with a single national park within the island rivalling Africa in size, and at the site's cut-off point reaching a scale of distortion where a road is thicker than Panama. This also reveals that the location of the North Pole, the lake mentioned by Randall, is the Rochon Dam.

Unlike previous Bad Map Projections, Morocco and Western Sahara are drawn as one unlabelled country.

===Comparison of actual/mapped areas===
{| class="wikitable sortable"
! Landmass
! Status
! data-sort-type="number"|Actual Area<ref name="act">Major contiguous land areas that should exclude all islands, ''especially'' major ones, '''''especially''''' especially those listed separately</ref> (Millions of Km²)
! data-sort-type="number"|Proportion Land Area
! data-sort-type="number"|Proportion Image Area<ref name="pri">Of only these listed areas listed</ref>
! data-sort-type="number"|Distortion<ref name="dis">NB. Difference between percentages, rather than percentage difference</ref>
|-
| Africa<ref name="suez">Edge at Suez Canal</ref> || data-sort-value="C2"|Continent 2nd largest || 29.7 || 19.95% || 35% || +15.1%
|-
| Eurasia<ref name="suez" /> || data-sort-value="C1"|Continent Largest || 53.4 || 35.83% || 30% || -5.83%
|-
| North America<ref name="pan">Edge at Panama Canal</ref> || data-sort-value="C3"|Continent 3rd largest || 19.3 || 12.96% || 15% || +2.04%
|-
| South America<ref name="pan" /> || data-sort-value="C4"|Continent 4th largest || 17.8 || 11.96% || 7.8% || -4.16%
|-
| Antarctica<ref name="ice">Significant ice-sheets may complicate mapped/actual 'land' areas</ref> || data-sort-value="C5"|Continent 5th largest || 14.2 || 9.53% || 5.3% || -4.23%
|-
| Madagascar || data-sort-value="I04"|Island 4th largest || 0.592 || 0.40% || 2.9% || +2.50%
|-
| Australia || data-sort-value="C7"|Continent Smallest || 7.55 || 5.07% || 2.5% || -2.57%
|-
| Greenland<ref name="ice" /> || data-sort-value="I01"|Island Largest || 2.17 || 1.45% || 0.87% || -0.58%
|-
| Borneo || data-sort-value="I03"|Island 3rd largest || 0.749 || 0.50% || 0.37% || -0.13%
|-
| New Guinea || data-sort-value="I02"|Island 2nd largest || 0.786 || 0.53% || 0.32% || -0.21%
|-
| Japan<ref name="hon">Honshu only</ref> || data-sort-value="I07"|Island 7th largest || 0.228 || 0.15% || 0.10% || -0.05%
|-
| Mainland Britain || data-sort-value="I09"|Island 9th largest || 0.209 || 0.14% || 0.10% || -0.04%
|-
| Island of Ireland || data-sort-value="I20"|Island 20th largest || 0.082 || 0.05% || 0.03% || -0.02%
|}

<references/>

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
Bad map projection #248: Madagascator

Mercator projection but with the North Pole in the Indian Ocean so it exaggerates the size of Madagascar instead of Greenland. Various countries and oceans are labeled.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Bad Map Projections]]

Talk:2611: Cutest-Sounding Scientific Effects

2022-05-02T01:54:39Z

Omgwtfargh: fix link

Can I suggest that anyone who replaces the hyphen/minus-sign in "foo - bar" (or, usually, "foo - breakout - bar" as some sort of bracketting side-comment) don't replace " - " with "–” or "—” ''without the spaces'', as it makes it look even more like the unintended hyphenisation that they probably think they're avoiding. At least preserve the spacing. That said, there generally is another way. 
If commas would be too confusing (e.g. proximity to a list (and especially Oxford Commas, which confuse things more!)) then parenthesising would be best. If you're too scared to nest brackets (and ellipses/etc don't seem viable …perhaps leave to the Discussion page?) then probably you just need to rewrite into several more atomic sentences rather than one huge run-on one that needs so many different pause/''sotto-voce''-effect in the internalised narration. As you can see, I run into this problem often enough. In this comment I've slightly broken a couple of my own rules (by omission) just because it makes a better exemplar to not rewrite to avoid. 
''However'' this is just general advice to the other mdash/ndash 'correctors' who pop up. In this article it was the transcript where "Effect A - Effect B" became "Effect A–Effect B", looking like "A-Effect" (or, actually "Effect-B", to reflect the true ordering seen). Obviously it represents the line between, but no hyphen ''or'' dash is there to be read, and it would have been as valid to use " / " as separator, except for the use (unspaced) in "Bouba/kiki". It would be nice to know what screen-readers think of every option — how they voice them, etc… 
Perhaps a " [is bracketed with] " transcript-label would be best (with the spaces, naturally). But I leave it up to someone else to think about. I'm still a bit overinvolved with the 'hyphen-like dashes' issue, as you can see, which often makes me a bit sharp and terse. For which I apologise, as with this whole 'getting off of my chest' commentary that I've a feeling I have either under-explained or over-explained. Or, simultaneously, both! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.145|172.70.90.145]] 08:44, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
:Maybe [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.209|172.69.79.209]] 08:54, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

:It was I who changed to dashes. Both dash length and spacing was, to the best of my ability, those that Wikipedia described for sport games and other “symmetrical” pairs. If it turned out unsuitable for this page, I think that another layout entirely would be preferable to the current solution. But for sure I won’t fight for it.

:[[User:While False|While False]] ([[User talk:While False|talk]]) 09:03, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Clearly this is going to end with a final of Cutaneous Rabbit - Woozle. Which combines to give you a self-reinforcing erroneous belief that someone is tapping your arm. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.209|172.69.79.209]] 08:56, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
:I could see there being an actual Perky/Cutaneous Rabbit draw (in both senses of the word, though I haven't checked to see if either have lost out yet on the official poll), whichbis when you are convinced that you are in fact only imagining the tapping moving up your arm, ''but it actually is!!!'' [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.5|172.70.162.5]] 09:59, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
::Russian bots have obviously got involved and manipulated the polling, because 5 out of the 8 have gone the wrong way, and the Cutaneous Rabbit has been eliminated.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.153|172.69.79.153]] 09:36, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

So... Who's setting up an actual bracket for this? Should we each create our own brackets?{{unsigned ip}}
:Randall's running one (see Twitter link near top), though I forget when the first-round polls are said to be closing (did it say 10 hours, when I checked for myself?) and as I'm not registered on a Twitter it's just a spectator sport for me and I'll probably rely on some other editor bringing the results over to ExplainXKCD when they are made known and putting them in the section now prepared on the Explanation page. Nothing to stop you making your own predictions/desires known ahead of the actual results, but it'd be purely a personal thing until enough people locally state their thoughts this to establish a (possibly different) ExpXKCD consensus result by manual collation of a completely scientifically-unregorous alternate poll. (Sounds like too much work for little added benefit, but maybe someone wants to do it anyway...) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.211|172.70.90.211]] 16:44, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Reading the wiki article about the Dr. Fox effect, in which they used "an actor, Michael Fox" I had to do a double take because I thought they were talking about Michael J. Fox. Now that would be a charismatic teacher! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.72|172.70.211.72]] 01:45, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
:The J in Michael J. Fox's name is completely meaningless, it is ONLY there to differentiate him from this other Michael Fox. :) (I've heard that he has said in interviews it stands for "Genius") [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 03:32, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

I can't think of a reason why "Bouba/kiki effect" was the winner of the tournament. The name isn't particularly funny or cute. The effect itself isn't the most interesting one offered. Is it a meme or a popular culture reference? Or bots? [[User:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For]] ([[User talk:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|talk]]) 22:18, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

The {{w|Bouba effect}} won! https://twitter.com/xkcd/status/1520519518388375557 [[Special:Contributions/172.69.134.17|172.69.134.17]] 01:31, 2 May 2022 (UTC)
: I tried to upload the image at https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FRn4cWjWUAAtwIs?format=jpg but it says I don't have permissions. [[User:Omgwtfargh|Omgwtfargh]] ([[User talk:Omgwtfargh|talk]]) 01:53, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Talk:2611: Cutest-Sounding Scientific Effects

2022-05-02T01:53:48Z

Omgwtfargh: tried to upload

Can I suggest that anyone who replaces the hyphen/minus-sign in "foo - bar" (or, usually, "foo - breakout - bar" as some sort of bracketting side-comment) don't replace " - " with "–” or "—” ''without the spaces'', as it makes it look even more like the unintended hyphenisation that they probably think they're avoiding. At least preserve the spacing. That said, there generally is another way. 
If commas would be too confusing (e.g. proximity to a list (and especially Oxford Commas, which confuse things more!)) then parenthesising would be best. If you're too scared to nest brackets (and ellipses/etc don't seem viable …perhaps leave to the Discussion page?) then probably you just need to rewrite into several more atomic sentences rather than one huge run-on one that needs so many different pause/''sotto-voce''-effect in the internalised narration. As you can see, I run into this problem often enough. In this comment I've slightly broken a couple of my own rules (by omission) just because it makes a better exemplar to not rewrite to avoid. 
''However'' this is just general advice to the other mdash/ndash 'correctors' who pop up. In this article it was the transcript where "Effect A - Effect B" became "Effect A–Effect B", looking like "A-Effect" (or, actually "Effect-B", to reflect the true ordering seen). Obviously it represents the line between, but no hyphen ''or'' dash is there to be read, and it would have been as valid to use " / " as separator, except for the use (unspaced) in "Bouba/kiki". It would be nice to know what screen-readers think of every option — how they voice them, etc… 
Perhaps a " [is bracketed with] " transcript-label would be best (with the spaces, naturally). But I leave it up to someone else to think about. I'm still a bit overinvolved with the 'hyphen-like dashes' issue, as you can see, which often makes me a bit sharp and terse. For which I apologise, as with this whole 'getting off of my chest' commentary that I've a feeling I have either under-explained or over-explained. Or, simultaneously, both! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.145|172.70.90.145]] 08:44, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
:Maybe [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.209|172.69.79.209]] 08:54, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

:It was I who changed to dashes. Both dash length and spacing was, to the best of my ability, those that Wikipedia described for sport games and other “symmetrical” pairs. If it turned out unsuitable for this page, I think that another layout entirely would be preferable to the current solution. But for sure I won’t fight for it.

:[[User:While False|While False]] ([[User talk:While False|talk]]) 09:03, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Clearly this is going to end with a final of Cutaneous Rabbit - Woozle. Which combines to give you a self-reinforcing erroneous belief that someone is tapping your arm. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.209|172.69.79.209]] 08:56, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
:I could see there being an actual Perky/Cutaneous Rabbit draw (in both senses of the word, though I haven't checked to see if either have lost out yet on the official poll), whichbis when you are convinced that you are in fact only imagining the tapping moving up your arm, ''but it actually is!!!'' [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.5|172.70.162.5]] 09:59, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
::Russian bots have obviously got involved and manipulated the polling, because 5 out of the 8 have gone the wrong way, and the Cutaneous Rabbit has been eliminated.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.153|172.69.79.153]] 09:36, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

So... Who's setting up an actual bracket for this? Should we each create our own brackets?{{unsigned ip}}
:Randall's running one (see Twitter link near top), though I forget when the first-round polls are said to be closing (did it say 10 hours, when I checked for myself?) and as I'm not registered on a Twitter it's just a spectator sport for me and I'll probably rely on some other editor bringing the results over to ExplainXKCD when they are made known and putting them in the section now prepared on the Explanation page. Nothing to stop you making your own predictions/desires known ahead of the actual results, but it'd be purely a personal thing until enough people locally state their thoughts this to establish a (possibly different) ExpXKCD consensus result by manual collation of a completely scientifically-unregorous alternate poll. (Sounds like too much work for little added benefit, but maybe someone wants to do it anyway...) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.211|172.70.90.211]] 16:44, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Reading the wiki article about the Dr. Fox effect, in which they used "an actor, Michael Fox" I had to do a double take because I thought they were talking about Michael J. Fox. Now that would be a charismatic teacher! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.72|172.70.211.72]] 01:45, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
:The J in Michael J. Fox's name is completely meaningless, it is ONLY there to differentiate him from this other Michael Fox. :) (I've heard that he has said in interviews it stands for "Genius") [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 03:32, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

I can't think of a reason why "Bouba/kiki effect" was the winner of the tournament. The name isn't particularly funny or cute. The effect itself isn't the most interesting one offered. Is it a meme or a popular culture reference? Or bots? [[User:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For]] ([[User talk:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|talk]]) 22:18, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

The {{w|Bouba effect}} won! https://twitter.com/xkcd/status/1520519518388375557 [[Special:Contributions/172.69.134.17|172.69.134.17]] 01:31, 2 May 2022 (UTC)
: I tried to upload the image at https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FRn4cWjWUAAtwIs but it says I don't have permissions. [[User:Omgwtfargh|Omgwtfargh]] ([[User talk:Omgwtfargh|talk]]) 01:53, 2 May 2022 (UTC)