Austin, Texas-based graphic artist Brian Shreckengast recently created an infographic for www.selfstorage.com showing how many countries could fit inside Wisconsin based on square mileage.
“I've always been interested in how 2-D map representations distort the size of countries, and thus how we think of them,” said Shreckengast. “I think many people in the US already underestimate how big their state is relative to most countries, and these map distortions exacerbate those misconceptions.”
He went on to explain that The Mercator Projection, which is used by most maps you see in schools and in Google Maps, is one of the best map projections for representing the shape of land masses, but preserves shape over size.
This size distortion is more particularly apparent the further north or south you travel from the equator. So in the case of Wisconsin, countries that are actually further north of it than many people think, like Ireland, the Netherlands, and Belgium, look larger relative to Wisconsin than they really are.
See the full infographic below:
