The ratio of the map distance to ground distance usually involves the use of inverse relationship between the extent of coverage of the entire map and the amount of detail visible. And this relationship is always written as 1/x or 1:x.
Where the numerator represents the map distance which always equals 1 and the denominator represents the ground distance which has similar units as the numerator.
1km on the map is inversely related to 2cm on the ground surface. This can be express as as statement scale in geography. Other types of scales are linear scale and representative fraction
