The GardenDespatches from The Satyrs’ Forest

Posts tagged as “cartography”

The Sledgehammer projection

An equal-area map of the countries of the world, with a curved outline curving in gently towards the poles

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The Sledgehammer projection — named after the Peter Gabriel song — is a novel equal-area map projection designed to fill the same niche as the Winkel Tripel. A composite of the Hammer and Peters projections, it preserves area, gives both parallels and meridians pleasing curves, and with its pointed poles, it does not distort areas in far northern latitudes to the extent that flat-topped projections such as Equal Earth do. (I dare even say that it handles Antarctica alright.)

The exact formula, based on Strebe (2017)’s technique:1

  • Sledge(λ,φ)=p(h[12h(λ,φ)]), where
    • h(λ,φ) refers to the Hammer projection2,
    • h(x,y) refers to its inverse3, and
    • p(λ,φ)=(893πλ,43sinφ)

To invert:

Sledge(x,y)=h(2h[98π3x,asin(34y)])

And, finally, an equation describing the outer boundary of the map:

tan2(316πx)=3-3y2

An interactive version is available here. Happy mapping!

Some election maps

I’ve been terribly bored recently, and have been occupying myself by trying out a way i came up with of mapping out elections — a compromise of sorts between geographic maps (which don’t always show the whole picture) and cartograms (which tend to be butt-ugly).

I chose to map out 2019’s results in the North East to get a feel of things:

A map showing the most recent general election as it was in North East England, with Labour winning a majority of seats

New Zealand is relatively small, so i figured it would be the best choice for the first full country:

And, finally, the most recent council election in good old Northumberland1:

A map showing the results of an election in Northumberland, with the Conservatives winning

A map of Noord-Holland

I had that Mapmaking Itch, but, cursed by bike-shedding paralysis about the alternate history map idea i hadα, i decided to do a little doodle in the back of my journal instead…

A map of North Holland and surrounding provinces doodled on some dotted paper.

Don’t mind the chicken scratch. I would have done some nice coloured shading, but i couldn’t be bothered to go downstairs to fetch the coloured pencils.