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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.

— Mark Monmonier

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Notes from Wikiquote

This chapter is based on Monmonier's keynote address in the "1995 Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing"

More quotes by Mark Monmonier

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.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Mark Monmonier (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.