On Feb 21, 2008, at 9:56 AM, Dylan Beaudette wrote:
This touches on one of the fundamental issues with geographic data:
when you
want to compute cartesian statistics (length, area, etc. in a planar
sense)
you are going to have to make a compromise in
shape
direction
area
AND the larger the region you want to work with the more drastic the
distortion on 2/3 of the above parameters you will encounter.
Isn't this largely a fundamental issue because, for good historical
reasons, we do geometry computations on 2-dimensional projections of a
complex object in 3-space? Your point is absolutely correct, but I
have always been interested in the reasons why geospatial is still
computed almost purely from projections in the computer age. (Not to
hijack the thread, but I have always been genuinely curious about
this; most of the underlying rationale seems suspect for an increasing
number of computer-based applications.)
Cheers,
J. Andrew Rogers
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