How to Lie with Maps

Author:

Mark Monmonier

Maps are not infallible.

"The image on a map is drawn by human hands, controlled by operations in a human mind.”John Kirkland Wright in 1942.

An Example- What’s the problem here?

Here a person has identified all the states to which they’ve been

However, a more accurate map shows them to not be so well traveled.

http://www.urbanarchives.org/wordpress/2006/02/10/how-to-lie-with-maps/print/

How do they lie?

Through:Selection- Choosing what to show Simplification- choosing to take a complicated

shape and make it simpleDisplacement- moving things from their

locationSmoothing- making jagged shapes roundedEnhancement- causing shaped to look like we

expect, rather than how they really areAggregation- merging shapes together

Examples

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/geography/mapreading/

Perception? What size is Greenland?

Greenland views

One is located near you…

Advertising maps

emphasize convenience

and de-emphasize their

competitors.

What have they done here?

1881- The railway line looks complete- but there aren’t any station stops in western Canada. It hadn’t been finished yet.

Washington D.C. Metro

Van Dorn Street is

east rather than North

of Springfield.

Who drew this map? Portland, Oregon

The street map on the left ignores the physical geography which prevents a neat grid from being formed.

Deliberate Mistakes:

The British Ordnance Survey (national mapping agency) includes small deliberate errors on maps including:an extra stream tributary imaginary farm outbuildings tiny kinks in riversexaggerated curves in roadsmissing apostrophes The town of Torquay is

misspelled- deliberately?The coastline is also

distorted slightly.

Mistake becomes reality?

Otto G. Lindberg and his assistant, Ernest Alpers, were traveling in the New York Catskill Mountains. They came across a deserted dirt road intersection scrambled their initials to name it "Agloe" as a “key trap” on the Esso maps.

http://www.ianbyrne.free-online.co.uk/special/error2.htm

More mistakes:

This Atlas of Europe has a mistake on one page where they omit all place names unless they have AS24 stations (a commercial gas station).Berlin is therefore left off the map

http://www.ianbyrne.free-online.co.uk/special/error2.htm

Politics as usual…

Purposes for political maps:Who is in charge of the US? Republicans or

Democrats.How often do people vote for the majority

party? Does this really make them a majority?

Propaganda the most common use for political map.

2004 election: Majority party?

This one shows a gradient of color- showing counties weren’t only for one party or another.

This shows that the geographic area of the majority may not express the feeling of the population majority.

Common lies on political maps

Misleading labels Exaggeration of features!

Distortion via projectionLet’s make the land look bigger!

Want it? Let’s just take it on paper! Annexation of land

Disputed Territory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_picture_candidates/Blank_locator_map_of_India

What would happen if India (or the surrounding countries) put the disputed territories on their maps as sovereign territory?

Quebec vs. Labrador

Census Data

MANY ways to lie with this kind of information.

MANY misunderstandings of this information.How do you know people didn’t lie when filling

out the form?Who says the right people got the form?How do you know what all the numbers

represent?How accurate is the data when you don’t see

the results for two years?

Colors and symbols:

The colors given to a particular object on the map are specificGreen = naturalRed= danger

Symbols and their sizes give information as

well

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/assets/binaries/map-of-l-a-chemical-plants

The Bottom Line

Lies on maps are not always bad. Sometimes they are even necessary in order to

show other accurate information. There are many different types of lies.

Scale, distortion, omission, addition Always be skeptical of the information you

see, this does NOT mean you can’t trust it, just know where it’s coming from! Think about bias and point of view as you would

with any other document.