okay look at this map and tell me if you can see what's wrong with it do you see it okay try this map what's wrong with this one okay well here's another and it also has something very wrong about in fact I'll go one step further and say every one of these map s is allowed memories well stick with me and I'll show you exactly what's wrong with those Maps but we got some ground to cover first this is the first time we're meeting up my name is Steve heimler and you are taking AP Human Geography which for a lot of you is your first AP core and I know this class can seem like a giant Hairy Beast with meatball breath that could curl your toe hairs but stick with me because I'm about to split up everything real nice for you so if you're ready to get them brain cows milks well let's get to it okay if you are hoping to crush that AP exam in your mind Vice then you have to begin at the beginning and get real cozy with maps because these sweet little bippies are at the very heart of the discipline of human geography and the reason maps are so important is because they are tools that depict spatial patterns all right now hold on I just started hurling vocabulary around like a cold fish at a Seaside Market so let me Define what I'm talking about the word spatial is related to the word space so spatial patterns are concerned with how and where different geographic features occur on the Earth's surface so for example look at where the 10 largest U.S cities are located on this map and what a geographer gets positively giddy about is trying to figure out why these cities are spatially arranged like this and not like this or what does it mean that the two most populous cities are on opposite sides of the country why does Texas have three of the largest cities but this area up here has got Buck okay now there are four distinct kinds of spatial patterns you're going to see represented in maps first is absolute distance which is a distance that could be measured in feet or miles or if you're nasty kilometers for example the absolute distance between Yosemite National Park and Rocky Mountain National Park is 954 miles however there's a related concept that cannot be depicted on maps namely a relative distance which measures social cultural or political differences or similarities between two locations for example this is a map showing the income levels across a neighborhood in Brooklyn New York you see this little green square people who live there make a lot of money and likely perform their morning constitutional on gold-plated toilets but the people who live here in the red square if they make very little money so these two areas are only a block apart in terms of absolute distance but in terms of relative distance they're much further apart in terms of the lifestyles that people are living in each place okay the second kind of spatial pattern depicted on maps is absolute Direction which is essentially north south east and west also known as cardinal direction but again there is a related concept that cannot be depicted on maps namely a relative Direction which describes one location in reference to another for example if you're a freshman you don't know your way around your school yet maybe you need to ask your teacher for directions to your second period classroom if your teacher gives you absolute directions let's just go North by Northwest for 32 paces and then do East for 14 paces and you'll find well then you might as well drop out of school because you're never going to find that class but if she says take a left out of my room or write down the next hall and then you'll find it well then that's actually kind of helpful and that's what we mean by relative Direction now the third spatial pattern depicted on maps is clustering and dispersal both of which show how different phenomena are organized across an area a phenomena are cluster that means they're close together like apartment buildings in New York City but a phenomena are dispersed that means they're far apart like farms in the Midwest and then finally the fourth spatial pattern depicted on maps is elevation which measures the height of geographic features relative to sea level this part right here is real high and this part is real low okay now any map worth itself is going to have a few common features and you need to know what they mean first you have the map scale which tells you how distance on the map relates to distance in the real world and you might see it like this in a ratio of form or you might see it represented by a bar but they're both telling you the same thing second Maps include some way to reckon Direction and usually this is represented by a compass rose which indicates the cardinal directions north south east and west or if the compass rose is a little spicier it might give you intermediate directions as well and third Maps depict the Earth's surface at various scales hold on didn't we just talk about scale like 30 seconds ago kind of but this is not the same thing so pay attention a map scale tells us about distance but the scale of the map tells us how much of the world we're seeing on this map and this is about the whole map itself so a large scale map zooms into a particular area and has a lot more detail but a small scale map zooms out to a national or global scale and has less detail so don't get those two confused too late okay now there are two broad categories of maps that you need to know for this course namely reference maps and thematic Maps but hey before I explain that let me ask you a question do you want to get an A in this class in a five on your exam in May I thought you did well if you need help making that happen then click the link in the description and check out my AP Human Geography High the review guide which has everything you need to study as fast as possible it's got exclusive whole unit review videos no guides to follow along practice multiple choice questions of full length practice exam and answers for every dank thing I just mentioned so if doing well is the kind of thing you're into then get that clicky finger out and have a look anyway back to the two kinds of maps you need to know first you need to know about reference Maps which display specific Geographic locations for example here's a road map which shows the location of you know roads or highways or here's a political map which doesn't show roads but instead shows the boundaries of states and countries probably for most of you when you think about the maps that you've seen in your life you're thinking about reference and the most important thing to remember here is that reference Maps display Geographic locations and I emphasize that because the other category of map you need to know is thematic maps and they specialize in displaying geographic information allocations information if you're about as confused as a bagel and a bucket of grits well let me try to explain the difference by showing you the five kinds of thematic Maps you're going to see over and over again in this course first is the choropleth map which visualizes data from a specific geographic region in different colors so let's suppose that they the questions keeping you up at night is how many anglicans live in Australia and where do they live I know it's like I'm inside your brain anyway a choropleth map like this can help you answer that question in order to interpret this mishmash of colors you need to pay attention to this scale right here so that tells us that the darker the green the more anglicans there are in a location and the lighter the green the fewer smell it when I'm stepping in good okay now the second kind of thematic map you need to know is a cartogram which distorts the size of geographic shapes to display differences in data so here's what a normal world map looks like it's a lie I know I I'll get there I will get that I suppose you wanted to know which of the world's countries devoted most of its resources to organic farming well this cartogram is going to tell you I know this looks like less of a map and more like somebody ate a map and vomited it back up but look it's actually very helpful just by distorting the sizes of the land masses you can see easily that Australia is positively killing it when it comes to organic farming Russia not so much okay now the Third Kind of thematic map you need to know is the graduated symbol map or you might see this called a proportional map two different names same thing and why well because a b Human Geography hates anyway graduated means that the symbol grows in proportion to the data represented for example here's a map of Europe which tells us which countries are the wealthiest over here in Western Europe they got boom boom flowing like a river but in Eastern Europe well I mean you guys are doing just great you just believe in yourself okay now The Fourth Kind of thematic map you need to know is the dot distribution map which uses dots to visualize the location of certain data points hey I can see you're starting to glaze over but stay with me it's story time so back in the mid-1800s there was an outbreak of a disease in London called cholera and it was making a lot of people really sick on account of it made them poop until they were severely dehydrated so that's fun anyway the best explanation people can figure out as to why this disease was spreading so rapidly was because of bad air that's it that was the best they could do but then came along our boy Jon Snow who visited every place where an infection occurred and then plotted them on a wait for it dot distribution map which you can see right here in doing this he discovered that the infections were spatially arranged around a common water pump and long story short he discovered that the people were getting sick because the water was contaminated why are you not falling out of your seats right now that's honesty okay whatever or instead of disease you might see a map like this in which the dots represent population so we can see that in Sweden everyone lives down here and not so much up here in the butt cold Arctic Circle okay finally the fifth kind of thematic map you need to know is the isoline map which uses lines to depict changes in data that could be any kind of data but you'll probably see this most often in maps depicting changes in elevation so here where the lines are close that means data is changing rapidly in this case you're looking at a really steep hill but if the lines are further apart the data is changing slowly like here where it's just sort of a gradual descent okay now that we've become relatively cozy and acquainted with what maps are and what they are good for we can finally figure out what's wrong with all those Maps I showed you in the beginning here's where I tell you that all maps are selective in what they present and distorted in some way and let me explain in case you didn't know the Earth is a sphere and if there are any flat earthers watching this well you know I mean this probably is not the course for you but I still love you but anyway the Earth is a sphere and any attempt to represent a three-dimensional object on a two-dimensional map will always mean that something doesn't look right that there's going to be some kind of a lie in every man the best way to understand this is to consider five different map projections that you're going to need to know first is the Mercator Projection which is a map whose latitude and longitude lines meet at right angles which means that it's a really good map for determining Direction but the LIE of this map is that while landforms are accurate near the equator the further north or south you go you're going to see prodigious amounts of distortion this map was created by Europeans during the age of Discovery and it was very useful for guiding ships to distant lands and bonus it makes Europe look way bigger than it really is anyway the classic example of Mercator Distortion is Greenland on the Mercator map Greenland is about five metric butt loads larger than it is in real life look if we move it down to the equator you can see its true size and oh look how cute it is okay the second map projection you need to know is the Peter's projection which was developed to challenge the eurocentric Mercator projection by depicting continents according to the true size of their land but the lie here is that while the size of the land masses are accurate the true shape of them is uh wonky as hell okay the third map projection to know is the good homolysing projection which accurately represents the shapes of the land masses but has to break up the oceans to do so which is you know a lot and then the fourth map projection you need to know is the polar projection which views the world from the North or South Pole this kind of projection directions are true and the land shapes are accurate near the middle but Distortion is pretty obvious As you move from the center and finally The Fifth map projection you need to know is the Robinson projection which distributes all kinds of distortion to all parts of the map and in this way it's a kind of compromise between the Mercator and Peter's projections there is some Distortion in the land masses but it's pretty minimal and that's why modern geographers tend to prefer the Robinson projection Okay click here to keep reviewing for unit one and click here to grab my AP hug heimler review guide if you need help getting an A in your class and a five on your examine thanks for coming around and I'll catch on the flip-flop heimler out