Do humans know the imprecision inherent in a map?

Abstract

Reading maps and using them to find the way from one location to another is part of our culture. When creating maps, reality is abstracted and scaled down. This process diminishes the precision with which locations are represented. Special symbols can only partly compensate this effect. A neglected question is whether humans take the imprecision of a map into account when searching for a location. We first clarify the difference between accuracy, reliability and precision. Thereafter we present an experiment investigating whether humans adapt their behaviour when searching for a location that was more or less precisely defined on a map.