Which Country is Bigger? The Map Decides

The useful part

You are presented with two countries as they appear on a Mercator map and asked to decide which is larger. Once you've made your choice, the map morphs into the Equal Earth projection, revealing the actual relative sizes of the two countries. What makes this particularly effective is that it turns an abstract problem with map projections into something you can experience for yourself.

How it works

• Rather than simply showing how Mercator distorts the world, the quiz tests how much that distortion has influenced our own perception of country sizes.
• The results can be surprisingly difficult to predict, particularly when comparing countries at very different lati...
• Since the UN General Assembly voted to promote equal-area projections such as Equal Earth as an alternative to the familiar Mercator projection, there have been a number of interesting attempts to show just...

Details worth keeping

(my attempt was this animated tween between a Mercator vs Equal Earth projection) Al Jazeera has come up with one of the most effective visualizations I've seen of the difference between Mercator and Equal Earth with its Can You Guess the Real Size of Each Country?