What is bearing?

Answer: A — The degrees out from the center of the map.

Bearing is the direction to a point expressed as degrees from a fixed reference direction, typically north. Imagine you’re at a location and want to head toward a destination—you read off how many degrees you must rotate from north to face it. On a map this direction is represented as an angle around the map, i.e., degrees out from the center, which is why that description best fits bearing among the options. The other ideas refer to something else: distance around a circle is the circumference, elevation difference is how tall one point is compared to another, and population density describes how many people live in an area.