In a discussion on a Reddit map group, someone claimed "Maine is the US state closest to Africa." Is that true? Can I use my SAS mapping tools to confirm, or bust, this myth? Follow along, as I dive in! ... The Map in my Head (Wrong!) My gut instincts tell me that the United States is in the Northern Hemisphere, and Africa is in the Southern Hemisphere, and therefore the southeastern US states will be closest to Africa - right?!? OK - I know that's not really true, because much of Africa is actually north of the equator. But yet, that's how I think of the two areas in relation to each other, in the (misguided) mental map in my head. Below is what the map in my head looks like (note that I applied huge latitude and longitude shifts to Africa, to create this inaccurate map).

Actual Map Rather than relying on the (inaccurate) map in my head, let's plot the US and Africa together on an actual map. I grabbed a copy of the US map (and created a new ID variable with the state names), and grabbed a copy of the Africa continent map (and created a new ID variable with the country names), and combined them into one map. I then used Proc SGmap to plot the combined map polygons with an Openstreetmap background map. This map shows that much of Africa is on the same latitude as the US, and it's plausible that perhaps Maine really is the closest state to Africa. proc sgmap maprespdata=both_attr mapdata=both_maps noautolegend; openstreetmap; choromap id / discrete mapid=id; run;

Actual Distances Even with a proper map, it's still difficult to determine exactly/definitively which US state is closest to Africa. You might be tempted to print the map, draw lines between each state and Africa, and then measure the lines with a ruler. But your results would be inaccurate! ... You can't just measure and compare distances on that map, because when you create a flat rectangular map from a sphere/globe, you have to stretch some areas more than others. In technical terms, we call this 'stret