Practice question · Multiple choice
Parish boundaries digitised from an eighteenth-century estate sketch render crisply on a modern map. Why is that appearance of precision misleading?
Hints
- Ask where the line's position actually came from.
- What does the software know about the sketch's reliability?
Show the answer
A. Because precision of display is not accuracy of source
Why
A crisp line asserts a confidence the source cannot support. This is the standard GIS trap: the display resolution is set by the software, and the accuracy by a hand sketch.
Practise GIS and Spatial Analysis
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