Cartographic Projection
every map is wrong, and by exactly how much
Concept

Projection family — where it appears

A set of projections sharing one construction and differing by a parameter or a function, such as the cylindricals, the conics and the pseudocylindricals. Whether a family's founding construction is true of its members is a separate question, and for the developable surfaces the answer is six of eleven.

Named by 7 essays across 3 fields — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.

The taught rule against the measurement, on 30 regions. Each cell is a region built to order — a box of the stated height and width-to-height ratio, centred at the stated latitude — with the family that actually scores best over it, and whether that is what the rule says. Every family is given its own parameters for the region: the conic its cone constant, the cylindrical its standard parallel and the choice of a normal or transverse axis, the azimuthal its centre. The rule is right on 19 of 30, and where it is wrong it is wrong in one direction: it keys on latitude, and what decides the answer is shape.

The rule of thumb, scored

Cylindrical near the equator, conic in the middle latitudes, azimuthal at the poles. It is the most repeated piece of practical advice in cartography and it has never been run against a population of regions. Run against thirty, it is right nineteen times, and every one of its failures has the same shape.

wrong · Audit Everywhere within 3,000 km of London, drawn in Lambert cylindrical. The set of places exactly 3,000 kilometres from London by the shortest route, projected point by point. On the ground it is a circle — every point of it is the same distance from the centre, in every direction. On this page the longest radius from the drawn centre is 4.17 times the shortest, so a reader with a ruler measures two different distances for one ground distance depending on which way the ruler points. The two extreme radii are drawn.

A circle of a distance is not a circle

Eleven essays in this field have followed a route across a map. A range ring is not a route — it is the edge of a set — and drawing one exposes a failure the route essays cannot: the same ground distance comes out 4.17 times longer in one direction than another on a common projection, and 13.03 times at 70° north.

paths · Reach Two rules, three populations. The taught rule keys on latitude; the replacement keys on shape. On the thirty regions the replacement was read from it scores 83 per cent against the taught rule's 63. On forty-five different regions built the same way it scores 91 — higher, not lower, so the generalisation the shortfall doubted is real. On the seven named regions this collection actually uses, both rules score 29 per cent, and following either costs a mean factor of 14.6. The third bar of each group puts the taught rule's polar clause back into the shape rule, which is what the out-of-sample failures ask for: it repairs four of them, breaks two that were right, and reaches 43 of 45.

The rule scored out of sample

A replacement rule was read off thirty regions and scored on the same thirty, and this collection recorded that as not being evidence about any other thirty. It is: on forty-five different regions the rule scores 91 per cent against the 83 it managed at home. What it cannot do is the seven regions the collection actually uses, where both it and the rule it replaced name the winner twice out of seven and cost a mean factor of 14.6.

wrong · Audit Three solutions of one condition, all exactly equal-area. The pseudocylindrical ansatz is x = λ·C(φ) and y = Y(φ) — two unknown functions — and the equal-area condition is one equation, C·Y′ = cos φ. So Y may be chosen freely and C follows, and these three choices give three maps that are equal-area to 1.8e-11 and look nothing like one another: their pole lines are 10%, 100%, 19% of their own equators. That is why the cylindrical family has one equal-area member and this family has as many as anybody cares to name.

The condition does not always decide the map

Write a family as a shape with an unknown function in it and every classical property becomes a differential equation. In three families the equation has one solution and the named projection is what comes back. In the fourth it has a whole function of solutions, which is why that family has forty members and the others have three.

families · Families Two members, their average, and the family's best answer to it. Two equal-area conics at cone constants 0.25 and 0.85, the average of the two, and the member of the family nearest that average — at 0.540, which is not the parameter midpoint. The average is not a conic at all: its parallels are still arcs but they are arcs of circles about different centres, so no single cone constant reproduces it and the residual is 0.1722.

A family is not closed under averaging

Nine rungs treat a family as a set of maps with a parameter running through it, and this collection's own compromise projections are averages of members. An average of two members is not a member: two conics far apart average to something 31 per cent of their own separation outside the family — and averaging within a family makes the map worse every time, while averaging across two makes it 16 per cent better.

families · Families Three named members of the family, and one the family has no name for. The equal-area pseudocylindricals are not a list of maps. They are the solutions of one equation — C(φ)·Y′(φ) = cos φ — in two unknown functions, so one function is free and the named members are points in a space of them. Writing Y as six numbers and searching over them finds a map at 25.03° of mean angular deformation against Eckert IV's 28.08, Mollweide's 31.83 and the sinusoidal's 38.86 — 12.2 per cent better than the best map the family has a name for, and every one of the four is equal-area to the same precision.

A family is a function, not a list

The equal-area pseudocylindricals are the solutions of one equation in two unknown functions, so one function is free and the named members are points in a space of them. Writing that function as six numbers and searching over them finds a map at 25.03° of mean angular deformation against Eckert IV's 28.08 — and two numbers are already enough to beat every map the family has a name for.

families · Families The test the ladder asked for, and it refutes the conjecture. How much better the best asymmetric projection is than the best symmetric one, under weightings of four different symmetries, with every symmetric map allowed to re-aim its axis at twelve candidate poles. The conjecture rung eight recorded was that the seven earn their place by PLACING distortion where a symmetric map cannot, so their advantage should collapse under a criterion with no place preference. It does the opposite: the advantage is largest at 1.343 under the uniform weighting and smallest at 1.144 under a band, with the fully asymmetric concentration at 1.204 in between. The winner is named on each row and the map it beat is Equirectangular throughout. The seven are simply better maps.

The maps with no family are simply better

Rung eight found seven projections with no continuous symmetry and noticed they are almost exactly the set anybody would choose for a world map, then offered a conjecture with a test attached: their advantage should collapse under a criterion that does not care where anything is. Run, it does the opposite — 1.343 times under a uniform weighting and 1.204 under a concentration. The conjecture is refuted.

families · Families

Named alongside it

The objects these essays reach for when they reach for this one.

OptimisationAzimuthalConicDistortion criterionPurposeAspectClosed formCompromise projectionCone constantDegrees of freedomDifferential equationEqual-area

All concepts