Interpreting Global Flight Maps

kodiaktau writes "Five experts including: artist, environmentalist, aviation consultant, data visualization expert and philosopher interpret a flight map showing global flights. While the imagery of the visualization is intriguing, the interpretations are particularly interesting and show how individual background and experience impact they way they view the data."

Comments

Eurocentric

[DNS-and-BIND]

I can't help but notice that the map not only uses the "north = up, therefore north = good" ideology but also places Europe square in the middle of the map. I expected better from an elite artist.

Re:Eurocentric

[Striikerr]

I don't see why you are complaining about this. Every civilization will place themselves central to the map. I grew up in North America and so the North American continent was always central with Europe etc. on the right side and Asia etc. on the left. Australia will place itself central and so will Europe (as seen here) and Asia on their respective maps. Having North at the top of the map is an international standard (to my knowledge). This has nothing to do with North being good (and therefore S being bad?)

Interestingly, as a child, I always thought that maps were the same everywhere (North America central) and so was surprised when I first saw maps from other countries. I paused a moment and realized why and that I was naive for assuming otherwise. I had wondered at that time if, to simplify things, Australia or other countries towards the Southern end of the planet, taught geography with South at the top.

Back on track, the interpretations were interesting to view. It shows us all that we perceive things in the world differently from others (as I learned so long ago with the maps)

Re:Eurocentric

[Whalou]

Also, placing Europe in the middle prevents having to split landmasses. When the Americas are in the middle, Europe and Asia are no longer connected.

Re:Eurocentric

[brisk0]

We (Australia) probably would have South at the top if Australia didn't look so dang weird upside-down.
(Also if we weren't a commonwealth country, and not everyone else did it that way, probably)

Re:Eurocentric

[nozzo]

years back I installed a program on a secretary's Windows 3.1 system. The new icon shifted the Microsoft Word icon to the left one place. Half hour later I get the director calling me saying the secretary was in tears because she had deadlines and I had 'deleted' Word from her system.

When I ran around and pointed at the icon she was ok again - all good to go. I even dragged it back to it's original place so I wouldn't be bothered again.

The ease in which some people get in to a confused state cannot be overstated.

So let's not mess with maps too much - North is at the top by convention.

Re:Eurocentric

[dargaud]

This is a typical (if not standard) map projection. What would you suggest? East Up? Centered on?

'East up' use to be the standard on medieval maps. Hence the word 'orientation': to figure out where the orient was (even if that meant waiting for the sun to rise I guess). After the invention of the compass which points north/south, maps began to be drawn with north on top.

Re:Eurocentric

[baKanale]

It's funny, I've lived in the United States my whole life and only recently can I remember seeing world maps centered on North America. All the world maps I usually see are centered on the Prime Meridian, which is nice since the map cuts off somewhere in the middle of the Pacific, near the Bering Straits.

Re:Eurocentric

[ImprovOmega]

Having North at the top of the map is an international standard (to my knowledge). This has nothing to do with North being good (and therefore S being bad?)

Just so long as you remember that the enemy gate is down.

RING RING

[ganjadude]

Hello, this is the FBI. we arent to happy with your flight visualization tool. you know, terrorists and stuff. why dont you go ahead and take that down....

Interpretations

[VorpalRodent]

So, let me get this straight...
The artist looks at it and sees art, without any insight into interpreting the data.
The environmentalist looks at it, and doesn't understand what it's actually showing.
The aviation consultant looks at it and accurately relays exactly what it was intended to represent, with some limited interpretation.
The data visualization expert understands the data, and provides some suggestions for allowing this format to provide more information.
The philosopher is insane

So the intended interpretation of the story is that we each see what we want to see in information. The meta-interpretation is that I should only hire an expert in an appropriate field to analyze my data.

Re:Interpretations

[Bob the Super Hamste]

The meta-interpretation is that I should only hire an expert in an appropriate field to analyze my data.

And possibility a data visualization expert along with the industry expert.

Re:Interpretations

[darkitecture]

Reminds me of a quote by Edgar Fiedler: "Ask five economists and you'll get five different answers - six if one went to Harvard."

Re:Interpretations

[Picass0]

>> "The meta-interpretation is that I should only hire an expert in an appropriate field to analyze my data."

An aviation consultant is going to be a better expert on the subject than a dog breeder, chef, or locksmith.

"Expert" is an overused and abused title in western civilization. I recently watched a show on BBC about Roy Lichtenstein. He was a 60's pop artist who copied nearly verbatim comic panels from Kirby, Kubert, Novack, and many of the best artist in comics in that day. He projected the panels and traced them onto canvas and painted them with ever so slight modification, placing special emphasis on the dot paterns used in printing.

So the snobby BBC "expert" (Alastair Sooke) debated Dave Gibbons (artist from The Watchmen) and tries to sell Dave on Lichtenstein's art being better than the originals he ripped off. Gibbons puts forth the argument that in no other field, not music or writing, would such wholesale plagerism be tolerated. You can't pass off a Beatles song as your own because you changed on or two small things. Sooke looks Gibbons in the eye and says the original artists were less talented so this is OK.

Sooke, BBC's expert, having no background or interest in comics, has written books trashing the talents of the original artists who Lichtenstein left uncredited. He describes the creations of people like Jack Kirby as "trashy" and "low" and "pulp". As an "expert" Sooke makes the argument that Lichtenstein improved the images he copied (a subjective opinion) and therefore he is the greater artist, even though Lichtenstein in his life never sold an original composition or creation of his own.

Lichtenstein's painting "WHAAM!" has sold for $10 million dollars. It is a ripoff of an Irv Novick panel from "All-American Men of War". Novick, nor any other artist, ever saw a dime from Lichtenstein.

Bottom line - the world is full of "experts". Many of them are well paid and full of rubbish.

http://davidbarsalou.homestead.com/LICHTENSTEINPROJECT.html

.

Re:Pretty, but is it real?

[kannibal_klown]

Pretty, but I'm dubious. Looking at the US, it looks like nearly half the brightness is in a triangle with the southern terminus in Orlando or Miami, and going to the northeast. If brightness is mapped to density of flights, then this says that half of the flights in the US go from the northeast to Florida? I just don't think that's true. Florida is a great attractor... but not that great.

Well, you can never ignore the Disney factor. Or the cruise-ship factor (many fly to Florida to hop the cruises there). Florida is really big for vacations.

BUT... then you also have the fact that lots of people fly Internationally. LOTS.

And then you have to factor in business trips. LOTS of those too. Many are International, which means Boston + New York + Newark. And many are just to the big business cities: New York / Boston Chicago. Which means TONS of people from the south east are going to one of those 4 cities every day. Either from Florida, or from Atlanta.

Then you have Atlanta, a huge / busy airport hub, It's relatively close to Florida. So all of that density is adding to that blob in the south-eastern section.

Re:Revealing data

[bobbied]

Airport hubs serve primary TWO purposes....

One is to provide a place for the spokes of the flying wheel to meet so everybody can change planes and get to their destination. Two is to provide access to at least ONE destination that a lot of people want to go too.

Where it might make sense to put a centrally located hub in the geographic center of it all, if nobody wants to actually go there, it's just not going to make it as a major hub. With all due respect to Kansas City, there is just not enough passengers who want to go there to make a hub of it work, at least not for a major airline.

Emissions

[gr8_phk]

Actually, the Environmentalist just bitched about emissions.

Yep. I've been wondering how air traffic affects the weather for a long time. Do the climate folks model this? I swear the weather changed in michigan after Delta bought Northwest and Detroit was demoted from primary hub to whatever it is now. Depending on conditions, con-trails may dissipate or they may start to grow into larger clouds. I'm not saying it's a problem, I just wonder if anyone has studied these effects.

Contrails and climate [Re:Emissions]

[Geoffrey.landis]

Actually, the Environmentalist just bitched about emissions.

Yep. I've been wondering how air traffic affects the weather for a long time. Do the climate folks model this?

Yes. It's a subject of tremendous interest. I saw a very good presentation on this at the AIAA Aerospace Sciences Conference two years ago, looking at global data on contrail-induced clouds viewed from satellites. The data from the weeks following 9-11-2001 was particularly informative, the time when global air traffic was temporarily grounded.

There's far too much research to summarize in a paragraph or two, but my quick overview is that contrail-induced high-altitude clouds (slightly) decrease daytime temperatures (reflecting incident sunlight) and also slightly increase nighttime temperatures (reflecting outgoing IR). Overall net effect on temperature is not large, but it tends to be slightly larger in heating the polar regions (on the average, less sunlight in, so the infrared is a little more important, and a significant number of flights go over the poles). But that's my summary from a non-random selection of papers and talks I've heard, not a rigorous review of the science, though, so YMMV.

Re: Pretty, but is it real?

[NatasRevol]

Which makes an interesting point.

Are the graphs flight-based or people-based? And which one is more relevant?