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noworries_13 t1_j3xyikq wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in Why are coastlines crinkly near the poles but smooth in the tropics? by emsot

Mercator has nothing to do with it, because that's what it actually looks like in real life if you are boating through those coastlines

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[deleted] t1_j3y26hx wrote

[deleted]

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StellarNeonJellyfish t1_j3yjd24 wrote

Stretching out a jagged coast would smooth it out, no?

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craigiest t1_j4004ua wrote

As I understand it, coastlines are basically fractal in nature over many orders of magnitude, so no, it shouldn't. Shrinking or enlarging details beyond the resolution could also result in smoothing. So it really matters what the data and display resolutions are and how they interact. A Mercator projection could be enlarging polar regions beyond the data resolution or compressing equatorial regions beyond the display resolution or both resulting in different domains of smoothing.

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