My Follow Friday World Tour stop today was at some Flyover States, being states in the United States bicoastal people only see from above when flying over them going from coast to coast.
If I were to fly from (A) Copenhagen to (B) Los Angeles one should, by looking at a traditional flat world map, think that the flight also would pass over these inland states.
But the world isn’t flat. The shortest route for an east to west flight will tend to follow the so called great circle being a much more northerly swing.
However, this isn’t the shortest route either. The polar route, being flying over the North Pole, is the shortcut in the real round world. Actually the Copenhagen (CPH) to Los Angeles (LAX) connection established in 1954 was the world’s first commercial polar route.
I find great analogies in looking at a map and solving data and information quality issues like in the post Sharing data is key to a single version of the truth which was a blog-bout with a UK guy and a Flyover guy.
Liliendahl on Data Quality 