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

Twenty-nine bearings of sixteen cities, every arrow forwards

Drawn here at the parameters it defaults to, with every essay that calls it.
Twenty-nine bearings of sixteen cities, every arrow forwards. A flat picture of sixteen cities on every continent that holds twenty-nine one-way bearings exactly, the most any flat picture of sixteen places can hold, with every arrow pointing forwards. It was built rather than chosen: starting from Nairobi and Tokyo, each further city is placed where two bearings to or from cities already placed meet in front of both. No choice of twenty-nine made at random in two hundred tries can be drawn. The frame holds 15 of the cities: Santiago is placed by two bearings that cross at a shallow angle and lands 19 times the rest of the picture's own radius away, so its arrows are drawn dashed to the edge. The other 211 bearings pay for the twenty-nine: the worst, New York to Los Angeles, dashed and heavy, is 172.6° from the truth.

A flat picture of sixteen cities on every continent that holds twenty-nine one-way bearings exactly, the most any flat picture of sixteen places can hold, with every arrow pointing forwards. It was built rather than chosen: starting from Nairobi and Tokyo, each further city is placed where two bearings to or from cities already placed meet in front of both. No choice of twenty-nine made at random in two hundred tries can be drawn. The frame holds 15 of the cities: Santiago is placed by two bearings that cross at a shallow angle and lands 19 times the rest of the picture's own radius away, so its arrows are drawn dashed to the edge. The other 211 bearings pay for the twenty-nine: the worst, New York to Los Angeles, dashed and heavy, is 172.6° from the truth.

It is one of 51 figures drawn by the same construction, and the drawing above is this one with nothing changed.

1 essay calls it. Every call below passes it something, because a placement that passes nothing draws whichever member of the family the generator happens to default to rather than the one its essay argues about.

Where it is called

Changing this changes every one of these figures.

Five bearings of four cities, held exactly. A flat picture of London, New York, Tokyo, Sydney holding five one-way bearings exactly, each drawn as an arrow from the city it is measured at: London to Tokyo, Sydney to London, New York to Tokyo, New York to Sydney, Tokyo to Sydney. Five is the most any flat picture of four places can hold, and of the 192 ways of choosing five pairs and a direction on each, this is one of eight that can be drawn with every arrow pointing forwards; all eight leave London–New York, dashed, unheld. The price is paid by the other seven bearings: the worst, London to New York, is 165.0° from the truth. The impossibility

Five bearings of twelve, and only eight ways to draw them

A flat picture of four places can hold five of their twelve one-way bearings exactly, the same count as distances, and the five are found by solving equations rather than searching. The equations cannot tell a line from its reverse. Of the 192 ways to choose five, eight can be drawn with every arrow pointing forwards, all eight leave London and New York unheld, and on sixteen cities no choice made at random can be drawn at all.

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