This Week in Comments: October 30th—November 5th, 2017
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Award Winning Map Shows a More Accurate World
Daniel Boulet:Essentially, if not actually, every map in existence was created with some purpose in mind. This necessarily leads to the mapmaker making tradeoffs between what the map illustrates and emphasizes vs what the map downplays or even ignores. These tradeoffs are an absolutely necessary part of designing a map. To pretend that there is some particular type of map which is universally more accurate than all other maps is nonsensical in all but one sense (see last paragraph below for more on this point).
When one sets out to discover/learn something via the use of maps, it thus becomes necessary to ensure that one selects the correct map for the task at hand. For example, if you want to understand international borders then pick a map which shows international borders. On the other hand, if you want to understand wildlife migration routes, then a map which shows international borders but which downplays physical terrain features isn’t likely to be all that illuminating.
Finally, the Earth itself can be considered to be a map of itself. In that sense, the Earth is the only map of the Earth in existence which is, by definition, completely accurate. Needless to say, the Earth as a map of itself is a pretty useless map in practically all situations.