37,500 border drawings: a map of the world as people remember it

37,500 border drawings: a map of the world as people remember it habibicode.org

Every border anyone has drawn playing Borderline, on an empty map. The only line nobody drew is the coastline.

176 points•nicocarsui•3 days ago•33 comments•

#map #border #remember #drawings #people remember #border drawings #every #anyone

33 comments

Hi all,

I created "Borderline", a border drawing game a few weeks ago.

Since then, thousands of people have played it and I have accumulated over 37,000 drawings, which are now all stacked on a blank canvas.

This allows you to see the world as people remember it.

You can also check similar maps for the US, France, the UK, Germany, Australia, and Switzerland.

Alternatively, you can also draw a few borders yourself (free, no signin required)

otherme1233 days ago

The game is really cool, but it allowed me to cheat on mobile when asked for coastal lines: it shows the actual coastal line for a second, then draws the rest of the map over. Also, it said Belgium is landlocked.

nicocarsui3 days ago

Thanks for the bug report I will fix these asap!

hellerve3 days ago

That was quite fun, and I enjoyed the data mining aspect of it. Quite edifying, thanks!

nicocarsui3 days ago

Thanks for your kind words. I love how the sum of all the errors still makes something that is correct :)

minervawes3 days ago

Can this be divided per drawer's country? I'd love to see how Americans draw the world map, versus, say, British or German.

nicocarsui3 days ago

I do not collect user data so currently this is not possible.

I could ask as an opt-in as it would be interesting for sure

dleeftink3 days ago

You could likely cluster individuals by drawn features; might not tells us much about geographic origin but may reveal interesting differences/levels in geographic aptitude, and which clusters correspond best to what land borders/contintents.

pyreko2 days ago

Yeah, I think that would be neat.

andai3 days ago

I'd be curious about the same thing but with world capitals, and high school math. Especially by generation, not just country.

You hear a lot of things (both positive and negative) about various countries and their education, it would be interesting to see some actual data.

One unsurprising trend I have noticed is that countries that value education more highly, put more effort (and more money) into it.

nicocarsui3 days ago

This is one of my long term goals with my site

Collect user-generated data (drawings, answers) through games and interactive pages, then measure the results and compare to open data sets or against common conceptions

cwmoore2 days ago

My county in the US, the level that manages education, is a rectangle.

Phineas_here3 days ago

well it would scratch my itch of curiosity but i think it would be a cool experiment survey type thing cuz we'd know how people from deferent regions perceive and understand other countries

aand161 day ago

Greece is a tough one for sure

baalimago3 days ago

We Swedes also try to ignore the Danes as much as possible

jeremyscanvic3 days ago

Neat! I wonder how they deal with people using possibly different map projections?

nicocarsui3 days ago

The data collection is standardised through my border drawing game so no issue with that

teiferer3 days ago

I think the question comes from (or is at least related to) the recent UN vote on moving from Mercator to Equal Earth projection.

What people are drawing isn't the "truth" on average. First, nobody has seen the world from actual far away (space) and is just using what they remember from school or other media. And second, there is no "truth" because we are fundamentally dealing with a 2d projection of the 3d surface of a sphere and there are many different projections, all with advantages and disadvantages, neither being more correct than any other.

tveita3 days ago

I was wondering the same thing, but playing it you only fill in small border segments at a time, with the rest of the map filled in, so the projection doesn't change much.

jcranmer2 days ago

The red lines are the only segments filled in via small border segments; the green and the blue lines require you to do much more of the country's outline.

Read the full thread on Hacker News →

33 comments

Related stories