We are the world

[andrewducker]

This is the world:

This is the distribution of its people:


It's fascinating how the differences really appear in the far North - Canada, the Scandinavian countries and Russia particularly.

Comments

[jinxremoving.livejournal.com]

I am enjoying all the maps! And ooh, Australia looks funny.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

It's fascinating how the differences really appear in the far North

Yep, harsh winters apparently suck, as far as population density goes anyway.

-- Steve knows how much of Russia and Canada are tundra or glacially-scraped inarable lands.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Scotland looks bigger than I would have expected, especially in comparison with Ireland.

[mooism.livejournal.com]

Scotland counts as part of the UK for this map, so it is boosted by England's denser population. Similarly, Alaska is boosted by being in the same country as the lower 48; I think it is more sparsely populated than Canada.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Ah, okay. Makes the map less helpful, but still interesting.

[andrewducker]

More localized ones here:
http://www.worldmapper.org/countrycartograms/

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, those are even cooler than the world map. The UK comes out completely unrecognisable, as do China and Ireland. The US less so.

[akicif.livejournal.com]

The maps done by the Sheffield group (See the link from the comments on http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/03/31/96-a-cartogram-of-the-worlds-population/ - but be careful, Strangemaps is a real timesink) now have more granularity, breaking each country up into cells, and expanding/contracting each cell according to the population of that cell, rather than simply in proportion to the country's population density.

[iainjcoleman.livejournal.com]

I imagine all of Britain has been scaled according to the average population figure for the UK. Otherwise Scotland would be much smaller and the south-east of England much larger.

[endless-psych.livejournal.com]

Your man further down the page is wrong I'm afraid.

Scotland population - Density: 168.2/sq MI
Ireland — Population Density: 153/sq MI

Although spot on with Alaska and Canada

[simont]

I'm suspicious of Antarctica!

[andrewducker]

I certainly wouldn't lend it money.

[simont]

On that map it has the third largest area of any country: 9396 pixels, below China (17325) and India (12920) and above the USA (3164). Even counting penguins, that can't be right! Presumably it was missed out of the rescaling algorithm. (Due, perhaps to no population data being recorded for it at all, or something like that.)

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Nope - same problem as the far North, allegedly: the underlying map is a Mercator projection and has a massive increase in local scale towards the poles.

[e-halmac.livejournal.com]

Australia is crazy!