[Ads-l] If you flattened out West Virginia, it would be biggerthan Texas

Mon Apr 16 16:34:27 UTC 2018

On Mon 04/16/18 08:54 AM  W Brewer <brewerwa at gmail.com>n wrote:

"As I learned in grade school geography class, if you flattened the earth out, you could fit it all into Antarctica. Mercator discovered this. And all the lower 48 could fit into Greenland. Cool! (That's before it started melting.)"

This is true of any infinite map projection, not just Mercator's but also the widely used stereographic and gnomic projections.  Mathematicians refer to this paradox as the "Hilbert hotel".

- Jim Landau

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