I am Wenjie Zheng, a sophomore this year. Right now I live in State College, PA but I grew up in Beijing, China. My major is Economics, but I would also like Geography as my minor, even as my second major. I haven’t decided what to do as the future career, but it will definitely be related to what I am learning now. Currently the topic of sustainability is a hot issue, as it closely related to the future of all human beings, whether how long we are going to last on this planet, and how we are going to sustain that amount of time. It interests me that I want to answer all the observations I witnessed around me. One of my hobbies is travelling. So I always see the actions people deal with environment. For example Germany likes to China harshly regulates the use on plastic bags; as well as the detoured ferry route to avoid shallow water coral reefs in Fiji.

I would like to talk about the issue with Visualization from this module. Visualization is an important way for people to be familiarized with this world, and it is also one of the most crucial tools for people to learn an object. In this section it addressed the issue that the most common map of the world that people are most familiar with is actually inaccurate in depicting the size of each country, water area, and continents. In the video posted, the scientists mentioned the example of Greenland Africa. It seems the Greenland is the same size as Africa on the map but it is actually 14 times smaller than Africa. This is due to the rectangular distortion with the map. They then introduced the Peters Projection, in which more accurately describing the size and location of each land in a rectangular map. By simply looking at the maps without knowing the figures and data people are often biased with area of a particular land. Visualization such as maps should offer an accurate depiction rather than making the map ‘good looking’.