Lab 5: Projections in ArcGIS

I found this lab to be interesting and insightful.  It was seemingly easy at first to follow the directions; I did not grasp the the overall concept of what was being asked of me until I applied the different of types of maps to create the projections.  I was under the impression we were projecting some unknown fact or looking to display only a certain kind of data, when in reality we were doing that, just in a simple way-using different map displays to represent the same information, in our case distance.  

I was unable to get varying measurements for ranges in distance. I got the same, actual distance for all of my projections although they should have been different. If the measurements were taken based off of the projections, my distances would have been accurate. I found myself asking questions like what projections are useful for different industries, like aviation, aerospace, and government for example.   

The imaging of the regions of the world is also fascinating to manipulate with different map projections.  For example, Alaska looks small and distorted on the sinusoidal map projection, but it looks larger and "normal" in the Mercator projection. The representations of surfaces in different methods lead to different conclusions about the area being analyzed. 

I found the lab interesting, but somewhat difficult, until I figured out how to make the actual map. It was also hard to choose between the large variety of map projections that ArcGIS has available. Map projections are useful in representing different types of data, even though the many types of projections can present issues.