4 ms·
It's such misnomers. You'd think the "lat" prefix comes from lateral and means an axis that goes sideways, but that's not the case.
by longtom 6y ago
It's such misnomers. You'd think the "lat" prefix comes from lateral and means an axis that goes sideways, but that's not the case.
- jeromenerf 6y agoNot to mention longitude and latitude are most often used for spherical coordinate systems, as angles, where x, y, z are usually meant for Cartesian coordinates, as distances, in a projected representation. As a French nitpick, the "sideways axis" is actually not going sideways, but pointing right at us :)
- gowld 6y agoThere's an unavoidable duality (An axis is definitionally perpendicular to the lines of constant value) The core of the problem is that the system talks about "lines" too much. In regular math, we have axes, but we don't think much about a point being at the "intersection of the x=3 line and the y=5 line", it's just "horizontally 3 and vertically 5". But in GIS we visualize a full grid, with "lines of latitude" instead of "lateral deviation".