"Views by Country" map

• 

  jodie1 · Member · May 15, 2015 at 5:53 am

  • Copy link
  • Add topic to favorites

  Why does WordPress use a distorted map in the “Views by Country” window? Their Greenland is the size of Africa and larger than South America, when in fact, an accurate map would show Greenland extremely smaller than both.

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

• 

  kokkieh · Staff · May 15, 2015 at 9:38 am

  • Copy link

  Hi there. This is one of the most common map projection methods, called the Mercator projection, in use since the 1500s and the standard used on the internet since 2005.

  To represent the three-dimensional curve of the Earth on a flat rectangular surface, the higher latitudes are stretched so the top of the map has the same width as at the equator. Most world maps are drawn using Mercator projection, as it’s the simplest. It shows the shape of landmasses while distorting the size.

  Most good atlases provide a detailed explanation of exactly how this works, if you’re interested in learning more. Or there’s Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_map_projections