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Why are we changing maps? (from The West Wing)

SaltLakeUsersGroup · 800.4K views · 2012-05-18 · 3:58

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Overview

A short clip from The West Wing in which staffers meet a group advocating the Peters projection and challenge the Mercator map. It was shown as geography humor at a Salt Lake GIS user group meeting.

On Hacker News

HN links it in any thread on map projections and the Mercator distortion of country sizes, often calling it a favorite scene.

Recommended by 3 HN people across 3 months · HN mentions 2021–2026

Topics

Film & TV clipsData visualization & information designVisual arts, photography & architecture
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mercatorwest wingcartographymap distortiongeography

What people said

sircastor · 2024-05 · Recommendation

Coincidentally, yesterday I saw (again) “The West Wing” scenes[1] that express this problem (and the related social issues). It was the first learned about map projections and I think if they aren’t already an explicit topic in school, they ought to be. I find it very interesting. [1] [VIDEO]

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randcraw · 2023-06 · Recommendation

There was a memorable scene from "The West Wing" on the biases imposed by most map projections, in particular, how Mercator makes North America look huge: [VIDEO]

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gundmc · 2021-05 · Recommendation

This reminds me of my favorite scene from The West Wing where they talk about how misleading the Mercator projection is with regard to the size of Africa. [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by SaltLakeUsersGroup, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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