

Every Map You’ve Ever Seen is Radically Inaccurate  - k2052
https://medium.com/knowledge-bombs/b86e4ab75c4f

======
zokier
I find it very difficult to believe that majority of people haven't seen other
than mercator projected maps. NatGeo notoriously has used a variety of
projections over time. Another fairly notable non-mercator map appears in the
UN logo. New York Times seems to use non-mercator maps.

Also imho saying that mercator projection is radically inaccurate is
misleading, as it is actually very accurate for some things, which is the
reason it's afaik used in navigation.

~~~
jdmichal
The Wikipedia article linked is actually very complete on the properties of
each projection:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_map_projections](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_map_projections)

See the "Properties" column and description of each at the end. Mercator is
marked as "Conformal", which means local angles are preserved. I believe that
basically means if you are going 45°, and you draw a 45° line from your
current location on a Mercator map, you will end up where that line goes.
Which explains why it's so good for navigation.

------
schrodingersCat
Hah! This post immediately made me think of West Wing:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8zBC2dvERM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8zBC2dvERM)

------
stuartcw
I think the editor must have removed the prefix "Preschoolers" from the title.

I can't believe that most people here haven't see the Dymaxion Map:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map)

