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. The fifth came nine and a half months later in April 2022. The sixth came 15 months later in July 2023.

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.

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 six 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 352 other unreleased bad map projections at least, as the highest number so far is 358 and as of 2023 there have been released only six bad map projections.

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 four, but with the third having the highest number so far). Release number shown at the end.

#79: Time Zones (No. 2)

#107: The Liquid Resize (No. 1)

#152: ABS(Longitude) (No. 6)

#248: Madagascator (No. 5)

#299: The Greenland Special (No. 4)

#358: South America (No. 3)

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 four were just plain black, gray, and white.