Is this just a by-product of mapping the surface of a sphere to a rectangle?
Yeah, it's called a Mercator Projection. If you look at the "Uses" section of the Wikipedia page [1] it gives a good example of the magnitude of distortion between Greenland and Africa.
Yeah, it's called a Mercator Projection. If you look at the "Uses" section of the Wikipedia page [1] it gives a good example of the magnitude of distortion between Greenland and Africa.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection