Re: distance from Easter Island to Chile

[Emanuel Berg]

Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu> writes:

> How accurate does your input have to be for that to
> be a significant?  I.e. if you're calculating the
> distance between two cities, and each city is 5 miles
> wide, the distance is +/- 10 miles depending on where
> in the two cities you decide to get the coordinates
> from. So if the error in the formula is 2 miles, it's
> less than the inaccuracy in the input, so the formula
> should be good enough.

Yes, let's make this crystal (ball) clear, this is an
implementation of a mathematical formula - if anyone
reading this is writing a school essay on geography,
*don't* use data from this tool :) The data is correct
but in a gross way.

I don't know what the professionals do to calculate
distances, but safe to say, they have more refined,
more specific, more empirical "down-to-earth" methods
(pardon the pun)!

I thought that was clear, but no harm, now it is.

-- 
underground experts united:
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573