Lab 5 - Projections

     In this lab, I had to find three different kinds of projections: equal area, equidistant, and conformal. There are two maps for each type of projection. I think this lab showed how important map projections are because depending on what needs to be done, one projection would be better than another. There are so many different types of projections because it is so difficult to represent a sphere on a piece of paper, changing from 3-D to 2-D. That means there is going to be distortion somewhere on the map no matter which kind of projection is used.

     But because there are so many different maps and projections, it is confusing trying to remember which type of map would be good for looking at for something and which is not. I do not think it is easy to remember what map is what kind of projection just by looking at it so it would be hard to figure out what is distorted. But with ArcMap, it is easier to manage all the different kinds of projections so it would be much more organized.

     So one of the good things about ArcMap is that it helps keep all the different kinds of projections organized and easy to access. It would be easy to pull up the projection that is needed and compare it to another projection. But in ArcMap, the projections are not necessarily labeled equal area, equidistant, or conformal so a little bit of research still needs to be done to figure out what kind of projection you are really looking at.

     Because there are so many types of projection, even if ArcMap can keep them organized, I think there are going to be a lot of confusion if someone did not really understand what they are doing. I did not even know maps had different features depending on how they are drawn. I realized from this lab that there are more to maps than meets the eye.