How to Lie with Maps

What Hacker News says

1. ecommerceguyJul 2026
   Former GIS guy here, I've modeled and mapped hundreds of rural jurisdictions so I'm familiar with what you are trying to accomplish. Not sure how comprehensive USDA soil surveys are these days as soil conditions can be hyper local (down to the feet).

   Many of large ranch lands and farms are going to be listed exclusively by a certain broker which may require website scrapping at minimum and or heads up data entry at worst.

   Colorado:

   https://www.ranchland.com/

   For general usability, I'd suggest at a minimum adding State and County lines, and further, census place points for labeling.

   You've included some interesting filters that's for sure.

   And of course my usual plug for a great mapping book - How to Lie with Maps - https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo274005...

   I'd be willing to give you input.

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2. driggsMar 2025
   The scale of each map is independent, and differs by an order of magnitude from the "lonely" top row to the "not lonely" bottom row.

   A charitable view would be that they consider each category independent.

   Another charitable view would be that they're focused on showing trends, not "absolute value of loneliness", and that you can view the order of maps Always-Usually-Rarely-Never to be an additional dimension. This would have better fit a linear layout, but as they note in the caption, a fifth map "wouldn't fit"; they are constrained by article layout.

   If you think the WP is simply trying to push the premise of the article, that there is a "Loneliness Epidemic", then you may enjoy the book `How to Lie with Maps` by Monmonier:

   https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo274005...

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3. SomeoneOct 2023
   It may be a bit challenging for a 7 year old, but get them to read “How to lie with maps” (https://www.markmonmonier.com/how_to_lie_with_maps__3rd_ed_1...), discuss it with them and set up something that allows them (possibly with some help from a grown up; I think tooling for this is still a bit nerdy) to make their own maps based on OpenStreetMap. They might want to prominently show all houses of relatives, all public playgrounds, zoos, McDonald’s, or whatever or de-emphasize or even hide roads not accessibly by bicycle, for example.
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4. notagoodideaMar 2022
   "How to lie with maps" by Mark Monmonier

   https://www.amazon.com/How-Maps-Third-Mark-Monmonier/dp/0226...

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5. dpc59Apr 2017
   Every single map is inaccurate in a way, I suggest you read How to lie with maps by Mark Monmonier.
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6. vitovitoJan 2013
   As someone with a degree in geography, this is a bit hyperbolic, and a bit of a one-sided, urban, first world, view of cartography that might be nice for advertisers in big cities with pervasive 4G or wifi, but will also be ignored everywhere else.

   Mapping is traditionally about sensemaking and placemaking. Precision and accuracy are two different things, and both are entirely context dependent. There's a famous book, How to Lie with Maps, all about it. Maps are how we take things from others by drawing a line in a different place, or how we explore boundaries by drawing what we know and wondering what's everywhere else. They are stories on paper that sometimes have legal or royal or personal meaning, but they are always still stories. Geography is a social science, and cartography is as much art as it is evidence.

   In Sketching User Experiences, Bill Buxton tells a story about maps, where your Google Glass example breaks down:

   Imagine that you were kayaking off the coast of Greenland, and needed a chart to find your way. You might have a paper chart, but you will probably have trouble unfolding it with your mittens on, and in any case, it will probably get soaked in the process and become unreadable. From the urban perspective, an alternative solution might be to go to your PC and use a mapping program on the internet... However, there is a minor problem here, too. You don't have your PC with you in the arctic, much less in your kayak. We all know about internet-enabled cell phones and PDAs--they might provide another alternative. Why not jump on the internet using your cell phone, and get the map that way?

   But here is the problem. You probably can't get cellular service where you are in your kayak. And even if you can, your battery is probably dead because it is so cold. Or, your phone won't work because it is wet. Even if your mobile phone does work, and you have service, you probably can't operate it because you can't do so without taking your mittens off, and it is too cold to do so.

   Now let's look at a third approach, one that the Inuit have used... This shows two tactile maps of the coastline, carved out of wood. They can be carried inside your mittens, so your hands stay warm. They have infinite battery life, and can be read, even in the six months of the year that it is dark. And, if they are accidentally dropped in the water, they float. What you and I might see as a stick, for the Inuit can be an elegant design solution that is appropriate for their particular environment.

   There are entire cultures where your Euro-centric view of mapping does not compute, so much so that researchers at my alma mater would go into jungles and teach third world tribes how the usurping white man views their world so they can make maps that you, the outsider, can understand what they had previously only expressed emotionally. There are entire continents where your "Mirror World" cannot accurately represent anything, and I feel that puts your seminal moment much further away than you imagine.

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