3 ms·
Let me give you a concrete example. Here is what North America looks like on this new map: https://i.imgur.com/lCI8DjY.jpg https://i.imgur.com/lCI8DjY.jpg Th
by jacobolus 8y ago
Let me give you a concrete example.
Here is what North America looks like on this new map:
https://i.imgur.com/lCI8DjY.jpg https://i.imgur.com/lCI8DjY.jpg
This is not a good projection to use if you want to see all of North America. There is dramatically more distortion than necessary, and shapes near the edges get very squished (the west coast of the US is okay), but it is not at all obvious to a naïve viewer what kind of distortions are involved, and past experience looking at soccer balls or whatever isn’t going to fix it.
(Note: a Mercator projection is also not a good choice for this. On a Mercator projection sizes are dramatically bloated as you go north.)
- mikeash 8y agoI'm not convinced it isn't still the best option. The naive viewer may not properly perceive the distortions, but I bet they'll get closer than with anything else, for general purposes. What projection would you say would be good for that view?
- jacobolus 8y agoFor North America per se you could e.g. pick the conformal projection with roughly constant scale around the boundary of the continent (one world atlas does this), or you could pick a projection which minimized distance errors (there are several possible ways of quantifying those, which will yield different maps), or you could pick among several equal-area projections (especially useful if you want to make a choropleth map), or for something dynamic you could use an azimuthal equidistant projection or some conic projection (e.g. Lambert conformal conic, Albers equal-area conic), or .... https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/pp1395 https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/pp1395 There are many choices. An orthographic projection is generally one of the worst except insofar as it gives the impression of a physical sphere when you zoom all the way out.