Previously, Goldberg and I identified six critical error types a flat map can have: local shapes, areas, distances, flexion (bending), skewness (lopsidedness) and boundary cuts.
>The Goldberg-Gott error score (sum of squares of the six normalized individual error terms)[...]
This is a nice generalised metric, and it's mentioned a few times that the authors' projection is good for a set of maps of the solar system.
But a generalised metric misses some points: practical maps of the world emphasise continuity at the points the mapmaker subjectively considers important. The standard Mercator projection has the London meridian at the centre, not purely because Europe was considered important but because the antipodal meridian through the Pacific, not passing through any population centres, is considered unimportant. Other projections like Goode-homolosine [0] are even more opinionated.
This map emphasises the polar areas, which are front and centre, and introduces a boundary cut along the equator, cutting populous countries like Brazil, Kenya and Indonesia in two. (It's ridiculous to say there's no boundary cut because you can turn the map over - in the same way you can fold a Mercator map or roll it into a cylinder, though admittedly other projections like Winkel-tripel don't have this property).
But a generalised metric misses some points: practical maps of the world emphasise continuity at the points the mapmaker subjectively considers important.
There is an old military complaint that battles always seem to take place at the very corner of the map. I guess that modern C2 systems have eliminated this problem.
Choosing the poles to be in the Pacific and Indian Oceans at the equator nearly completely solves this problem; the Russian Far East is cut, but no other populated landmasses are.
Comments
But, for what definition of "error"?
This article explains how they measure the error.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-most-accurate...
This is a nice generalised metric, and it's mentioned a few times that the authors' projection is good for a set of maps of the solar system.
But a generalised metric misses some points: practical maps of the world emphasise continuity at the points the mapmaker subjectively considers important. The standard Mercator projection has the London meridian at the centre, not purely because Europe was considered important but because the antipodal meridian through the Pacific, not passing through any population centres, is considered unimportant. Other projections like Goode-homolosine [0] are even more opinionated.
This map emphasises the polar areas, which are front and centre, and introduces a boundary cut along the equator, cutting populous countries like Brazil, Kenya and Indonesia in two. (It's ridiculous to say there's no boundary cut because you can turn the map over - in the same way you can fold a Mercator map or roll it into a cylinder, though admittedly other projections like Winkel-tripel don't have this property).
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goode_homolosine_projection
There is an old military complaint that battles always seem to take place at the very corner of the map. I guess that modern C2 systems have eliminated this problem.
Choosing the poles to be in the Pacific and Indian Oceans at the equator nearly completely solves this problem; the Russian Far East is cut, but no other populated landmasses are.
I didn’t realize until another comment mentioned it, but before you start spinning, you can click a part of the world to center the map on it.
Wherever you centre it, though, there's a boundary cut which is an entire great circle (compared to Mercator which has a boundary cut half as long).