The real sizes of countries

Maps twist our perception of the world. Countries closer to the equator—which happen to be poorer1—seem smaller than they are.

This is because the world is a 3D sphere, but maps are 2D projections on a plane. That means distortion!

Source

The original post has a lot of other fascinating visualizations of it. And here’s a website that lets you drag things around to see how the sizes compare.

I knew this was a thing but I didn’t realize the effect was that pronounced. Look at Greenland! It goes from the size of Africa to 1/14 the size of Africa.

West Wing did a whole thing about this:

Maps that show true sizes are called “equal-area projections” such as the Gall-Peters projection, Albers projection, and Mollweide projection. Here’s a list of them if you’re interested in this rabbit hole.