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Globes! I'm sure I had a globe in my classroom in grade school and I had one on my desk at home. I'm sure they didn't represent the actual shape of the earth, b

• Stratoscope 10y ago
  Even if your globe is a perfect sphere, it's good enough for all practical purposes. The difference between the Earth's diameter across the equator vs. between the north and south poles is only 3.3 parts per thousand. In other words, suppose you have a globe one meter in diameter and it is (erroneously) a perfect sphere. The error is just a few millimeters, hardly enough to notice or worry about on a globe of that size. And that globe is much better than any possible projection onto a flat map. This is what's puzzling to me: instead of arguing about one map projection vs. another, why don't they use globes instead to give a more accurate picture? Then they could get into the interesting discussions about the compromises and errors that all map projections make.