• chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    It isn’t more accurate than Mercator, it just preserves different features.

    When flattening a map, there are 4 competing aspects of the globe you can try to preserve: shape, direction, area, and distance. You can’t preserve all 4 at once. You can try to min-max on 1 or 2 (e.g. Mercator preserves direction and shape since that’s what’s needed for sailing), or you can accept some distortions of all 4 in a compromise projection.

    It all depends on the purpose of the map.