There are increasing scale distortions as you go farther from the equator, but angles (and thus shapes) are always conserved. Tissot's indicatrix is a way of v

There are increasing scale distortions as you go farther from the equator, but angles (and thus shapes) are always conserved. Tissot's indicatrix is a way of visualizing both scale and shape distortions on maps. It shows how equal-radius circles drawn on the Earth are distorted by a given map projection. This is what it looks like for the Mercator projection: [1]. This is what it looks like for a map projection that does not preserve angles (shapes): [2]. The latter projection would produce very misleading road maps far away from the equator. Intersections would get squished in the North-South direction, so the angles between roads would be wrong. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tissot%27s_indicatrix#/media/File:Tissot_mercator.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tissot%27s_indicatrix#/media/F... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tissot%27s_indicatrix#/media/File:Tissot_behrmann.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tissot%27s_indicatrix#/media/F...