READERS’ CORNER

Regarding the article just published about the Gott, Goldberg and Vanderbei projection [A new view, April 2021], I have seen a few news items in various outlets about this recently, but something important has been missing from all of them that I think warrants a follow up piece from your magazine. The problem with this projection is that it privileges mid-latitude (as well as polar) regions. More equatorial amount of distortion but are also split between the two ‘ sides’ of the map. In my view, this makes the new projection no better than (and perhaps even worse than, given the equatorial split) the Mercator view. Astrophysicists may well be map distortion, but it requires a properly geographical perspective to appreciate the power of maps and the politics of cartographic representation. An article from your magazine conveying these points would be great to see, and something that I would use in my classes when I teach about maps and projections. James Hanlon Associate Professor, Department of Geography, Southern Illinois University