See the world: maps distorted to show information about countries

Worldmapper.org has hundreds of cartograms -- that is, maps with the countries' sizes distorted to illustrate information. (Via Metafilter.)

Below are a few of the more striking examples. (These are based on 2002 data unless stated otherwise.)

If there's a cartogram that particularly interests you, I recommend clicking on the graphic to go to the worldmapper.org page where I got it from -- each of those pages includes extremely accessible and informative blocks of text to clarify the information, plus links to the raw data.

First, the conventional map based on actual land area:

Now, distorted based on population:

(Note that many of the maps are basically about population, so you should compare those relative to the population map, not the conventional map. For instance, since India, with over a billion people, is huge in the population map, India tends to stick out in most of these maps.)

Projected population in the year 2300:

Population in the year 1500 (total world population: 438 million):

Scientific research (based on the percentage of scientific papers worldwide that were published in that country in 2001):

Patents (based on the percentage of all 312,000 patents granted annually in the world that were granted in that country):

Christians (based on the percentage of Christians living in that country) (click here for cartograms for individual denominations):

Muslims (based on percentage in that country):

Jews (based on percentage in that country):

Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, and Sikhs combined (based on percentage in that country) (click here for individual cartograms for each religion):

Atheists and agnostics combined (based on percentage in that country) (click here for individual cartograms for each group):

Alcohol and cigarette exports:

Alcohol and cigarette imports (click here and here for more imports and exports):

Carbon emissions in 2000:

1-to-4-year-old mortality (based on the the proportion of worldwide deaths of children aged 1-4 that occurred in that country):

Reductions in 1-to-4-year-old mortality over 32 years ("The map shows children aged 1 to 4 who did not die in 2002, where their counterparts in 1970 did."):

Landmine casualties (based on the percentage of all 7,000 landmine casualties in the world from 2003 to 2005 that occurred in that country):

Post-WWII deaths in war (1945 to 2000):

Murders ("sized in proportion to the absolute number of people who died from violence in one year"):

HIV/AIDS deaths (based on the percentage of the world's 2.9 million HIV/AIDS deaths occurring in that country in one year):

Malaria deaths (based on the percentage of the world's million-or-so malaria deaths occurring in that country in one year):

Poverty (based on the percentage of poor people worldwide who live in that country) (see the links near the bottom of this page if you want to know how they calculate poverty):

Government contribution to international food aid (based on the percentage each country's government contributed to worldwide aid in 2005):

Again, there are hundreds more at this worldmapper.org webpage.