All Maps Are Wrong
8th September 2024
This particular topic piqued my interest after seeing negative feedback about the quality of tracking on services like AllTrails and Strava. Users often complain about inaccurate routes, inaccurate mapping, “incorrect” elevations, “wrong” distances and more. What I find really interesting about these related complaints is that there are a lot of fundamental misunderstandings about how GPS works, expectations around accuracy, and confusion around how that data interfaces with other applications. So today, I’m going to dive a little bit into how digital mapping systems are built and how GPS works.