Map Misunderstanding
world map jigsaw brooches
Originally uploaded by meganprice
How best to depict the world? Probably not this way, although it does help to remind us about plate tectonics! Showing the world on a flat surface is easy, but it distorts reality. On Friday one of my pupils, on discussing the typical Mercator projector, said that she had always thought that the other half of the world was somehow on the reverse, a bit like heads and tails of a coin, I suppose. There’s a real lesson there about how we teach reality. I like the thread on Edward Tufte’s web site where people have posted suggestions about map projections. The best solution is to issue pupils with globes, inflatable a la Michael Palin, perhaps, but a sure way of dispelling many spatial misunderstandings.
