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Mark Monmonier Quotes

born 1943 United States

Mark Stephen Monmonier (born February 2, 1943) is a Distinguished Professor of Geography and the Environment at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University. He specializes in toponymy, geography, and geographic information systems.

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Random Mark Monmonier quote

5 quotes

No one can use maps or make maps safely and effectively without understanding map scales, map projections, and map symbols.

Not only is it easy to lie with maps, it is essential. To portray meaningful relationships for a complex, three-dimensional world on a flat sheet of paper or screen, a map must distort reality.

Whenever a map of count data makes sense, perhaps to place a map of rates in perspective, graphic theory condemns using a choropleth map because its ink (or toner) metaphor is misleading.

Publication of my commentary in the Communications from Readers section might be one way for The American Cartographer to affirm a commitment to openness, and to demonstrate once again that efforts to stifle dissenting opinion tend to backfire.

Although cartographic journals have been rigorously reviewing software for nearly a decade, the profession today seems as powerless against stupidly designed software as it was against the flagrant misuse of the Mercator projection.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Mark Monmonier (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.