All language subtitles for 02_what-is-a-map.en

So, what is a map anyway?

I know it may seem obvious,

but humor me for a minute, okay?

If what we see here is the real world,

if we cannot think of ourselves as hovering above the earth looking down on reality,

then a map is a drawing or representation of that real world.

It relates to space,

which is a term we use a lot in mapping.

Here, we're not talking about outer space of course,

but about the space in and around a location,

usually, on the surface of the earth.

A map shows what exists in a particular location,

and the spatial relationships between objects or features that exist there.

So, for example, is the tree next to the road?

So, that spatial relationship would be proximity.

Does the railway crossed the road?

That would be the intersection of different objects,

an object or features,

anything that we want to show on our maps such as a building,

or a pond, or a road.

If we go back to looking at reality for a second,

we can look at this and ask ourselves,

if we were to make a map of this location ourselves what would we include on our map?

What would we leave out?

As a start, I suppose we could include things like

land and water for literally just starting from scratch and saying,

what would we include on our map?

So, okay. Land, water, that seems important.

What else? Roads, trees,

buildings, all of these things are just the important ones.

So, major roads, big buildings or every single one.

If you're thinking about what you would include,

then you're already thinking about what the map will be used for or its purpose.

Are you making a map for yourself?

Are you making it for somebody else?

Is it for anybody?

Is it for everybody?

Do you want your map to answer one specific question?

Or will it be multipurpose?

We can't include everything on a map.

So, we have to make choices on what to include.

But why do we have to choose?

Why not just map everything and be done with it?

This gets it the reason why we make him up in the first place.

We're trying to create a simplified version of the real world.

It's simplified because it actually makes it more efficient for us to be able to

find what it is that we're looking for and filter out everything else.

Not only that, we can add colors, symbols,

lines, and so on to give that map more meaning.

It's like a code,

a graphical code that is a shorthand,

or way for people to be able to quickly look at a map,

and decode that and get the information that they're looking for.

So, if we wanted to keep

all of the possible information that's available, in other words,

just keep this as an image instead of simplifying it into a map,

we could just add some labels to the image and be done with it.

But that isn't much of a map, is it?

So, here we have, for example, okay,

if I want to know where the High Park Zoo is,

I can find that pretty easily.

If I want to know where, let's say,

Rennie Park is, I can find that easily.

But what about things like picnic tables?

If I'm looking for a picnic tables in High Park, let's see.

Picnic tables are pretty small.

I can't really see them from here.

So, if I ask somebody,

"Where do you want to meet to have a picnic?"

it'll be tough. It'll be difficult to do that.

Okay, what about something bigger like roads?

Well, you can see some of the roads in the park.

So, again, remember this is just my map, okay?

So, here's a road here.

You can see that pretty well.

But what may not be obvious to you is there's actually a road through here,

which is almost completely obscured by trees and shadows,

because you can see a little bit of it there.

So, even then, we have roads that could be obvious to people,

or may not be obvious.

It would be better is if we can simplify this map, like I said,

turn it into graphical symbols that make it

actually easier for us to find what we're looking for.

So, if we create this graphical simplified version as a map,

it's much easier to see where those picnic tables are.

So, for example, oh,

what do you know? There's one there.

There's one there. You get the idea, right?

Now, you may also think about the fact that

these picnic tables are larger on the map than they are in reality.

This isn't exactly perfectly to scale.

They've been made a little bit larger than reality in order for them to be easier to be

seen and to be picked out easily. Same thing with the road.

So, what do you know?

Well, first of all, this road becomes really much easier to see,

but even this one called Spring Road I was just showing you,

now it's easy to pick out on our map.

So, overall, it's easier to interpret, don't you think?

If I wanted to give you driving directions,

it's easier to do this with a map and it would be with

a Satellite image or what we're thinking of as the real world.

So, reality really has too much complexity,

it's not usually what we're looking for.

When we make a map, we want to choose to focus on

certain things so that we can study them,

model them, and understand them in some way.

What you include on your map depends on who you are, and the purpose.

What do you after? What are you going to do with that map?

Who you recreating it for?

I would like you to think about that when you look at maps in the future is that,

they were created for a specific reason.

That reason may be that say Google made them because they want people to

be able to find things quickly or get directions.

But there's lots of things that are left out of a Google Map,

or any other map that's been made.

So, somebody had to make conscious decisions about what gets included,

and what gets left out.

When you're making your own maps, it will be the same thing.

What do you want to include,

and what do you want to leave out and why?

So, there's the thinking process that goes on there.

So, just to finish up with this slide,

the map on the right was made by OpenStreetMap.

Which according to their website is built by a community of

mappers that contribute and maintain data about roads,

trails, cafes, railway stations,

and much, much more all over the world.

This is a different web map,

made by a different group of people.

This one was done by Esri.

You can see that what is on this map is different.

For example, this one does not have picnic tables on it,

but it does have things like contour lines that

help us see changes in elevation over the landscape.

This map looks different because it was a different group of

Cartographers or map makers who decided on different styles,

which means that they have different choices of colors, lines, symbols.

So, when you see a map, I encourage you to take

a closer look at it and look at both the style,

and the substance of the map.

What features on the map?

What features are left out?

How are those features drawn?

Are they drawn so that they are very noticeable such as the bodies of water on this map,

or so that they blend in and are only

noticeable if you're really looking for them, such as the contour line?

So, when you see a map, I encourage you to look at

both the substance of the map and the style of it.

The substance, like I've been saying,

is really what is included in the map,

what's on it, as opposed to what's been left out.

The style of the map,

are the things about the decisions that the Cartographers made

about how to portray things on that map such as point symbols,

lines, colors, are things meant to stand out.

So, for example, there's nothing that stands out enormously much on this map.

But just things like water bodies, you can see like the,

the blue is easy to discern or to pick out from the map,

as opposed to something like the contour lines which are more subtle.

So, that's all intentional.

All of these things are there so that you can see them when you need to see them.

Some things are more obvious,

somethings are less obvious.

That's all about the style of the map,

which does relate to the purpose of it as well.

So, here's another version of the same location made by the same organization,

this is Esri again, but with a different look.

This is what they call their streets basemap.

If we compare it to the last one,

you can see that the Topographic map has outlines of every building including houses.

Just imagine how much work it would have been,

to trace all of those individual outlines of every single house in this neighborhood,

and for the entire city for that matter from an air Photo or Satellite image.

So, that's what you have in the left.

On the right is the streets map,

which is much simpler presumably because the intended purpose is navigation, right?

Streets navigation, in which case you really want to be able to

focus on the road network without being distracted by too much detail.

This is yet another basemap.

This is one created by National Geographic.

So, notice how they went for a really simple clean design.

There's no contour lines,

but there is a subtle shading that shows you a little bit about the terrain.

I don't know if you can quite pick this out,

but there is, for example,

a little bit of shading there to show that there's a change in elevation.

There's a little bit of shading in here.

So, it's there, but it's not super obvious.

Of course, this is High Park again.

This isn't exactly the Rocky Mountains,

you're not going to get enormous amounts of difference.

But the main thing I want you to get out of this is that,

these are different maps created by

different people and they made different choices about how to show things.

Maybe, I'm overemphasizing this,

but I really want to encourage you,

when you look at every single map,

from now on you can think about what's there?

What isn't there? How did they make the choices they made?

Or why did they make those choices?