The Atlas of the Real World

[driveway]

A new Atlas has come out which makes use of cartograms (statistical maps) which twist, shrink and distort the familiar world map according to various statistics.


Toys Exported:



Toys Imported:


Hydroelectric Power:


GDP Wealth:


Alcohol Consumption:


Killed by Volcanoes:


Military Spending 2002:


War deaths 2002:



See over 300 crazy maps just like these at:
www.worldmapper.org

[Flame On]

Totally cool!

[Gozer]

Neat-O. Thanks for sharing.

[troutman]

Atheists


Men Smoking

[ken0042]

The following ones make me wonder how accurate this is; based on how Canada fares compared to the US:

Internet users 2002:


Adult Literacy:


Both show Canada as being very far behind the US, when we should be about the same if not better. And according to the info it is per capita.

[driveway]

I'm guessing that they aren't adjusting their stats on a per-capita basis, but rather showing the raw numbers.

Hence why Canada is almost always so tiny.

Except in this map:

Nuclear Waste

[The Ditch]

Originally Posted by ken0042

The following ones make me wonder how accurate this is; based on how Canada fares compared to the US:

Internet users 2002:


Adult Literacy:


Both show Canada as being very far behind the US, when we should be about the same if not better. And according to the info it is per capita.

From the website it says which to me doesn't seem like per capita but might be. Just doesn't seem like it would make sense if it was per capita for a lot of these maps. Is India really that much more literate per capita than Canada?

Territory size shows the proportion of all people over 15 years old who are literate, that live there.

[OBCT]

I think their per-capita info is off smidge. I agree with Ken ... a few of those maps look totally implausible even if you just consider USA and Canada.

[Bagor]

Forest loss.



Tourist destinations (wonder how they distinguish between that, business trips and illegal immigrants).




Rabies deaths. India dominates.

[Slanter]

I think those maps are kind of stupid, because when you distort the shapes like that, you can't even tell which country is dominating. For example, in the Rabies Deaths one, I wouldn't have had any clue that the giant yellow blob is India except that I was told.

[corporatejay]

Territory size shows the proportion of all people over 15 years old who are literate, that live there.

I think the map is showing the proportion of people based on the size of the country geographically. Since Canada is the second largest land mass, and we have a small population, we always end up looking tiny. It's probably not per capita, but per sq/km

[llama64]

Originally Posted by corporatejay

I think the map is showing the proportion of people based on the size of the country geographically. Since Canada is the second largest land mass, and we have a small population, we always end up looking tiny. It's probably not per capita, but per sq/km

That's how I understand these maps.

Take the world wide total of whatever is being measured, get the percentage of said total that reside in a given country. Adjust the area of that country on the map to fit the proportion.

Or something like that.

It's not a per-capita measurement, it's a percentage of the total.