Patterson Political World Map among the most commonly used reference maps (slightly rounded shape). A very large world map, available in the Patterson cylindrical projection (also in Natural Earth and Natural Earth II). It shows the borders between government units such as states, regions.

The Republic of Croatia can be divided into regions in several ways. They have no administrative support because Croatia is divided into counties, and each region usually consists of several counties.

Every map projection has some kind of distortion. You can keep the proportions of the size and end up with serious distortions of the shape ( equal area projection ). Or you can try to show the shapes correctly, but you end up with serious distortions of the surface relations ( conformal ). Or you can balance the distortions and create a compromise projection that will have both distortions of the proportions and shape, but to a lesser extent than in the previously mentioned types of projections. Cylindrical projections, which will always produce rectangular maps of the world, lead to very strong distortions. I think that in most cases it is better to choose a different kind of map projection, e.g. pseudocylindrical or lenticular. There are applications where a rectangular map is useful or even mandatory: the best example is, of course, the Mercator projection, which was the only map used in navigation for centuries.

In 2014, Tom Patterson, Bojan Šavrič and Bernhard Jenny presented the Patterson cylindrical projection , which is based on the Miller 1 projection of Osborn Maitland Miller (1942). They chose an approach that had never been used before: the distances between lines of latitude increase steadily moving from the equator to 55 degrees, flatten out at about 60 degrees, and then decrease towards the poles. Of course, the polar regions are still shown much larger than they are: Greenland appears larger than Australia, although in reality Australia is about three and a half times larger than Greenland. The Patterson projection is a very good cylindrical projection to consider whenever you need a rectangular map. It still exaggerates the polar regions, but to a lesser extent than comparable projections, and preserves the shapes of land masses very well. And, as a side note, when you really need a map of equal area, don't choose the cylindrical projection...