The headline accompanying this Economic Times (India) article is more than a bit misleading: ”Google Maps leads three men to death as car plunges from incomplete bridge into river.” Horrifying. The bridge across the Ramganga River in Uttar Pradesh was closed after a part of it had been washed away in a flood several months previously. But there’s a twist. Google Maps didn’t mark the bridge as closed, and did route the travellers across it, but the road hadn’t been blocked or marked closed on the ground either. This wasn’t a case of ignoring local signage and blindly following online maps: local signage failed too. Google isn’t a panopticon: someone would have had to tell Google Maps that the bridge was closed, and I have to wonder whether that happened. But a Google Maps error makes for a better headline, one that goes international, than a horrible local lapse. At any rate, an investigation is ongoing. [Jalopnik]
Month: November 2024
Alice Hudson, 1947-2024
Alice Hudson, who from 1981 to 2009 was chief of the New York Public Library’s Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, and as such responsible for one of the world’s significant map collections, died on 6 November 2024 from complications of kidney disease. She was 77. The New York Times published her obituary yesterday.
Review: Mapmatics
The first intimation I had that maps involved mathematics was when I looked up a map projection and came face to face with the equation that generated it. Math was never my strongest subject, so it’s probably for the best that I never went into cartography. Especially since it turns out that there’s a lot more math hidden behind the maps we use on a daily basis than you might think, a point demonstrated in detail by Paulina Rowińska’s book, Mapmatics, which came out in June from Picador in the U.K. and from Belknap in the U.S. in September.
Cartographic problems are often mathematical problems: Gauss’s Remarkable Theorem demonstrates that a flat projection of a round globe must necessarily add distortion. Surveying by triangulation is simple trigonometry. The coastline paradox, whereby the length of a coastline depends on the scale at which it’s measured, is because the coastline is fractal. Real-world navigational problems can be solved via topology and graph theory, algorithms and heuristics. The takeaway from this book is these things are math, and that math is at the heart of so much of this.
Rowińska is a mathematician and science writer, and she very much approaches her subject from the math side of things. Making the subject accessible to non-mathematicians is no small challenge, especially when moving to subjects that, while absolutely part of the discipline of mathematics, don’t obviously code as such to normies. Graph theory, number theory, probability density function and topology make their appearances. (I confess to being surprised at the omission of GPS, but now that I think about it, GPS is really about timekeeping and physics.) No less a challenge is finding the balance between explaining the mathematical concepts and explaining how they apply to mapping, and doing so in a way that doesn’t completely lose the plot and turn the whole thing into a math textbook with cartographic examples.
On balance I think Rowińska mostly succeeds: there were plenty of points where the math was still esoteric to me, but I still got that, yes, this was math, and here’s what it does in these cases. As the book progresses the math gets a bit more remote from popular understanding, and the map side of things is less about maps than the data being mapped, but even then the examples are absolutely real-world and relatable (gerrymandering, disease mapping), and there are plenty of a-ha moments coming from the math behind familiar puzzles like the travelling salesman problem and the four-colour theorem.
I received an electronic review copy from the publisher.
Related: Map Books of 2024.
Mapmatics
by Paulina Rowińska
Picador, 6 Jun 2024 (UK) | Belknap, 17 Sep 2024 (US)
Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop
Independent Map Sellers
Lots of little companies and individuals making and selling maps; the Independent Map Sellers page lists a bunch of them in one handy place. “Interested in buying something special for the map enthusiasts in your life (or yourself)? Skip the giant companies and go straight to the source: there are loads of skilled, independent cartographers out there whose work you can buy!” [Daniel Huffman]
The Yellowhead Treaty Map
The Yellowhead Treaty Map is an interactive map of the various treaties between the state and Indigenous peoples in Canada. “Covering every Canadian treaty from 1763 to the present, The Treaty Map aims to challenge the commonly held view of treaties as land surrenders and offers a comprehensive, interactive learning and teaching tool, grounded in Indigenous perspectives of treaties.” [Ian Mosby]
A Social Media Update
The Map Room’s Twitter account was finally deactivated on Wednesday after roughly two years of sitting idle. If the @maproomblog username is resurrected and reused, it ain’t me.
Follow The Map Room on Bluesky or Mastodon instead. Cross-posting to the Facebook page continues, though given how Meta is it’s unlikely you’ll see things there.