Which Country is Bigger? The Map Decides

Since the UN General Assembly voted to promote equal-area projections such as Equal Earth as an alternative to the familiar Mercator projection, there have been a number of interesting attempts to show just how much our perception of the relative size of countries changes when we switch between the two.(my attempt was this animated tween between a Mercator vs Equal Earth projection)Al Jazeera has come up with one of the most effective visualizations I've seen of the difference between Mercator and Equal Earth with its Can You Guess the Real Size of Each Country? quiz. You are presented with two countries as they appear on a Mercator map and asked to decide which is larger. Once you've made your choice, the map morphs into the Equal Earth projection, revealing the actual relative sizes of the two countries.What makes this particularly effective is that it turns an abstract problem with map projections into something you can experience for yourself. Rather than simply showing how…