| True area | On the old Mercator map | Distortion vs truth |
| Turkmenistan | 470,600 km² | 781,196 km² | 1.7× |
| Greenland | 2,154,754 km² | 25,447,645 km² | 11.8× |
| Africa | 30,370,000 km² | — | 1× |
Old maps drew Turkmenistan at about 781,196 km² km². The truth is 470,600 km² km² — a difference of 66%% that school atlases carried for centuries.