April 20, 2007, 12:32 pm
The Walmart Projection
By Henry Woodbury
On a Mercator grid, artist Benjamin Edwards presents a Walmart projection: a world map that sizes nations by the number of goods they sell in Walmart.
The data was compiled in 2001 using a simple methodology:
Go to the nearest Wal-Mart from your present location. Inside each store, count as many objects as possible while noting their countries of origin.
To represent this data, Edwards roughly scales each country by percentage of the total product count, removes countries with zero results and places those remaining in approximate orientation. The result is crude but graphically effective.
But if you approach the map neutrally (elide the word “Walmart” from your brain), what does it mean? Compare the Walmart map to WorldMapper’s Total Population map.
Now my question is not “why is China so big?” but “why is India so small?” (And, “why Italy instead of France, Germany or Spain?”)
Comments
i dont get it!
Posted by nbii on February 18, 2009 at 3:38 pm
This is so not representative.
“Why is Italy so big.” lol, just because you found 2 items from Italy instead of for example 1 from Germany – this is so coincidence!
Posted by Andi on May 28, 2009 at 5:30 am