Unchartered Territories: “Maps twist our perception of the world. Countries closer to the equator—which happen to be poorer —seem smaller than they are. This is because the world is a 3D sphere, but maps are 2D projections on a plane. That means distortion. So we develop a poor intuition for comparative region sizes. The biggest loser is Africa, which is humongous…So the Mercator projection clearly distorts our perception of the world. But it’s not the only way it’s distorted. We center our map around the equator and the reference meridian, which goes through London.