[robinofloxley]

You are happy with the distances between California and Japan, so if I asked you what is the distance between say San Francisco airport (SFO) and Tokyo airport (HND), what is this figure? Where did your information come from? Why do you trust this source? If for some reason you can't give me that specific figure, then give me an alternative trustworthy figure (plus source) for any two places in California and Japan.

Follow up question, can you explain how you check that distance on Bing maps? i.e. can you talk me through how I would do that. Obviously I could use the "red pin" method, but you have some doubts about that, so how else can this be done?

You can fly nonstop from LA to Tokyo in like 10-11 hours. 

If you know what type of plane you are on you can estimate the top speed of the plane with information online.
In addition I know a couple of people who work on planes who have corroborated the speed information about the planes found online.
In addition each plane is equipped with something that can measure speed.
If you are in a large passenger plane and not allowed into the cockpit to see the speedometer you can ask a flight attendant what your cruising speed is.

You take your miles per hour speed estimate and multiply the number of hours spent flying to come up with a distance estimate.

You can do the same for shipping times although I've never taken a ship to Japan. I trust that hundreds of thousands of people who have done international shipping have done this.

I take my hat off to you. You've built an entire belief system based on a staggeringly varied set of criteria for your standards of evidence.

You won't believe a shred of evidence from the official Bing documentation because anybody could have written or changed it, whereas in reality it is likely that only a few dozen people in the world will have the necessary security permissions to permit that and they will all be subject to scrutiny from their peers and line managers, so the likelihood that this documentation is anything other than what Microsoft intend it to to be is non-existent. Which leaves you with two possibilities, either it is correct or Microsoft are deliberately lying to you for "reasons".

By that standard, you can't ever believe anything anyone has ever written anywhere because anyone could have written it or changed it.

But when it comes to the distance from LA to Tokyo, you can just get the necessary information to work it out online or from a couple of people you know or you just ask a flight attendant (so where do they get their information from?). This is your standard of evidence gathering now is it?

You claim a non-stop flight time between 10 and 11 hours between the two airports. I just checked flightradar24 and quickly found a couple of examples, one was just over 11 hours, the other 9 hours 15. They both use a Boeing 777 which has a cruise speed in the range mach 0.84-0.89. Now cruise speed varies with altitude and temperature and ATC may assign a common speed for separation in busy periods, so the aircraft might not be able to fly the speed they ideally want, but lets work some approximate figures out.

Cruising at 40,000 feet, mach 0.84 equates to 554mph and with a 9 hour 15 flight time, that gives a distance of ‭5,125 miles.

Cruising at 30,000 feet, mach 0.86 equates to 583pmh and with an 11 hour flight time, that gives a distance of 6,413 miles.

So that's 5,769 miles +/- 644 miles, i.e. +/- 11%

Plus or minus eleven percent! That's a level of accuracy you're comfortable with? The answer is certainly correct, the actual distance is 5487 miles, so well inside the range just calculated.

Now lets have a look at Bing maps. You've used this for 15 years, never knew it had a distance measuring tool ("red pin"). Took me all of 5 minutes to discover that and I'm not a Bing user.

You start off saying you trust Bing maps, now you've backtracked somewhat and you trust just the driving and walking distances. Out of interest, how do you measure walking distances, surely not with a GPS device? But Bing maps covers the whole world, most of which is covered in water, so what you are really saying is you trust Bing maps for the 30% of the earth which is dry land, but only the bits which have marked roads or tracks you can measure.

You claim without offering any evidence whatsoever that Bing maps distances (i.e. the ones you trust) are based on real world distances which include taking elevation into account. Where do you get this from?

I can't speak for Bing, since it is closed source, however in OpenStreetMap, roads are defined via paths joining nodes, so A to B to C etc. and the nodes are defined in terms of their latitude and longitude. Elevation is not defined although you could theoretically get elevation data from other sources. Various people have asked how these route distances are calculated and the consensus seems to be that using Haversine or Vincenty between pairs of nodes and totalling these values along a route is quite satisfactory as elevation changes make little difference. I haven't checked the code to see if this is actually how it's done and I'm not going to bother doing so.

My guess is that Bing may well use Haversine in just this way for their driving and walking distances. But unlike you, I'm not prepared to just come up with an idea and take it on board without investigation, so lets have a look. How about for starters we find a really nice long and very straight road and compare the driving/walking distance with the "red pin" distance. How about this one: https://www.bing.com/maps?osid=c39ac59f-9e2f-4ba1-b226-09a9c1384f66&cp=24.764682~50.511889&lvl=9&v=2&sV=2&form=S00027. Bing says it's a 256km drive across Saudi Arabia. The "red pin" distance is ... 256km. Exactly the same.

OK, so far, but this road has no significant elevation changes, so how about https://www.bing.com/maps?osid=6651a272-f4ac-4f9b-8874-70ff9bcacbc0&cp=37.752553~-122.41805&lvl=15&v=2&sV=2&form=S00027. A 10.6km walk up and down the hills of your old favourite, San Francisco. Plenty of elevation changes there. Guess what, the "red pin" distance is ... 10.6km.

Of course none of this proves anything about how Bing actually goes about calculating driving or walking distances, but it certainly suggests that simply using the "red pin" method to calculate each segment of a path is giving the same answers.

And we've already established to everyone's satisfaction apart from yours that "red pin" is Haversine and Haversine is based solely on spherical trigonometry.

[iamcpc]

I take my hat off to you. You've built an entire belief system based on a staggeringly varied set of criteria for your standards of evidence.

Do you not believe that the distance between LA and Tokyo is somewhere in the neighborhood of 5000-6000 miles? If you do then it sounds like you've built an entire belief system based on a staggeringly varied set of criteria for your standards of evidence.

You won't believe a shred of evidence from the official Bing documentation

Yes I would. If their website said their calculation was based on a formula and someone set up a set of data points, say 100,  which were based on the formula and compared those to 100 red pin measurements from Bing and all of them matched then I would believe that the red pin distances were based on the formula.

If Bing shared their source code and documentation about it then I believe the claims made by the Bing website.


If you Bing says the sky is yellow that is not evidence that the sky is yellow.

A claim made by a website on the internet <> evidence

because anybody could have written or changed it, whereas in reality it is likely that only a few dozen people in the world will have the necessary security permissions to permit that and they will all be subject to scrutiny from their peers and line managers, so the likelihood that this documentation is anything other than what Microsoft intend it to to be is non-existent.

I've already stated, multiple times, that I've developed websites at the request of the CEO which contained incorrect information. You don't seem to understand that this DOES happen.

By that standard, you can't ever believe anything anyone has ever written anywhere because anyone could have written it or changed it.

Like in school I'm reading these books and the teacher is demonstrating how the claims in the book are accurate. They are giving specific examples, drawing diagrams, and effectively DEMONSTRATING that what is in the book is at least somewhat accurate. Even so there are many documented cases where stuff makes it into the text books and gets taught by teachers which is 100% a LIE like w/ Germany and the holocaust. Or in North Korea where they teach, in textbooks, that children are kidnapped and forced into slavery by Americans.

But when it comes to the distance from LA to Tokyo, you can just get the necessary information to work it out online or from a couple of people you know or you just ask a flight attendant (so where do they get their information from?). This is your standard of evidence gathering now is it?

They get their information from a Pilot who gets his information from the speedometer. Based on this I believe the distance between Tokyo and LA is between 5000 and 6000 miles. Do you disagree?

You claim a non-stop flight time between 10 and 11 hours between the two airports. I just checked flightradar24 and quickly found a couple of examples, one was just over 11 hours, the other 9 hours 15. They both use a Boeing 777 which has a cruise speed in the range mach 0.84-0.89. Now cruise speed varies with altitude and temperature and ATC may assign a common speed for separation in busy periods, so the aircraft might not be able to fly the speed they ideally want, but lets work some approximate figures out.

Cruising at 40,000 feet, mach 0.84 equates to 554mph and with a 9 hour 15 flight time, that gives a distance of ‭5,125 miles.

Cruising at 30,000 feet, mach 0.86 equates to 583pmh and with an 11 hour flight time, that gives a distance of 6,413 miles.

So that's 5,769 miles +/- 644 miles, i.e. +/- 11%

Plus or minus eleven percent! That's a level of accuracy you're comfortable with? The answer is certainly correct, the actual distance is 5487 miles, so well inside the range just calculated.

On those flights did the Captain announce the cruising speed or are you just making one up? If the captain did not announce a cruising speed did you ask the flight attendant what the cruising speed was or are you just making it up?

Now lets have a look at Bing maps. You've used this for 15 years, never knew it had a distance measuring tool ("red pin"). Took me all of 5 minutes to discover that and I'm not a Bing user.

If you're not a Bing user then how are you using Bing to measure red pin distances?

You start off saying you trust Bing maps, now you've backtracked somewhat and you trust just the driving and walking distances. Out of interest, how do you measure walking distances, surely not with a GPS device?

There are many different ways. You can use a rolling measuring tape, GPS, you could walk along a road where you can use an odometer, you can use a bicycle odometer.

 But Bing maps covers the whole world, most of which is covered in water, so what you are really saying is you trust Bing maps for the 30% of the earth which is dry land, but only the bits which have marked roads or tracks you can measure.

You claim without offering any evidence whatsoever that Bing maps distances (i.e. the ones you trust) are based on real world distances which include taking elevation into account. Where do you get this from?

From comparing predicted driving distances to my odometer when driving up and down steep hills in San Francisco multiple times.


Of course none of this proves anything about how Bing actually goes about calculating driving or walking distances, but it certainly suggests that simply using the "red pin" method to calculate each segment of a path is giving the same answers.

And we've already established to everyone's satisfaction apart from yours that "red pin" is Haversine and Haversine is based solely on spherical trigonometry.

Show me one shred of evidence other than "This website says it so it must be true". Please keep in mind that I've personally developed websites at the request of the CEO which contained incorrect information. You don't seem to understand that this DOES happen.

[robinofloxley]

I take my hat off to you. You've built an entire belief system based on a staggeringly varied set of criteria for your standards of evidence.

Do you not believe that the distance between LA and Tokyo is somewhere in the neighborhood of 5000-6000 miles? If you do then it sounds like you've built an entire belief system based on a staggeringly varied set of criteria for your standards of evidence.

You won't believe a shred of evidence from the official Bing documentation

Yes I would. If their website said their calculation was based on a formula and someone set up a set of data points, say 100,  which were based on the formula and compared those to 100 red pin measurements from Bing and all of them matched then I would believe that the red pin distances were based on the formula.

Well isn't this the very thing I offered to do to convince you the documentation was accurate? I've already offered to write a test using 1 million data points, comparing Bing "red pin" with an independent implementation of Haversine. If I do that and the results support the documentation, will you then "believe that the red pin distances were based on the formula"? I'm still willing to do this if you want, but I don't want to waste my time if it doesn't get us anywhere.

If Bing shared their source code and documentation about it then I believe the claims made by the Bing website.


If you Bing says the sky is yellow that is not evidence that the sky is yellow.

A claim made by a website on the internet <> evidence

because anybody could have written or changed it, whereas in reality it is likely that only a few dozen people in the world will have the necessary security permissions to permit that and they will all be subject to scrutiny from their peers and line managers, so the likelihood that this documentation is anything other than what Microsoft intend it to to be is non-existent.

I've already stated, multiple times, that I've developed websites at the request of the CEO which contained incorrect information. You don't seem to understand that this DOES happen.

Sure, but in your example, your CEO told you to write something, you did, so the change was authorised all up the line. Of course a senior manager at Microsoft could do the same and in fact I can't see any other way this could happen. If the change was unauthorised, it would eventually be fixed and someone would be disciplined.

But I'm asking myself, how likely is this? Just as in a court of law, I want to weigh the evidence and see. In this particular case they might just as well have said "getDistanceTo - Calculate the distance between two locations on the surface of the earth". Why would they even need to mention Haversine at all if it wasn't correct, that just creates a problem which didn't need to exist and then they have to put a gagging order on the dev team and bring in a senior manager to enforce it and hope nobody ever blows the whistle on this. It's a bit of obscure technical documentation that's only of use to a developer, why the completely unnecessary deception?

Sure what you've outlined is possible. But I don't think you've introduced reasonable doubt here, in my view, it's just not likely. Not in my eyes.

By that standard, you can't ever believe anything anyone has ever written anywhere because anyone could have written it or changed it.

Like in school I'm reading these books and the teacher is demonstrating how the claims in the book are accurate. They are giving specific examples, drawing diagrams, and effectively DEMONSTRATING that what is in the book is at least somewhat accurate. Even so there are many documented cases where stuff makes it into the text books and gets taught by teachers which is 100% a LIE like w/ Germany and the holocaust. Or in North Korea where they teach, in textbooks, that children are kidnapped and forced into slavery by Americans.

But when it comes to the distance from LA to Tokyo, you can just get the necessary information to work it out online or from a couple of people you know or you just ask a flight attendant (so where do they get their information from?). This is your standard of evidence gathering now is it?

They get their information from a Pilot who gets his information from the speedometer. Based on this I believe the distance between Tokyo and LA is between 5000 and 6000 miles. Do you disagree?

Well how do you know they get the information from a Pilot. How do you know the pilot is giving correct information? What makes a pilot trustworthy? How do you know the ASI is giving an accurate speed? There's a whole chain of trust in there that you don't seem at all interested in questioning, yet in other areas you distrust what to everyone else seems rock solid evidence.

Yes I do believe the distance is between 5000 and 6000 miles but that answer is so vague it's barely helpful at all. I'm perfectly happy with 5487 miles because I've every confidence this is correct to within a few miles. If I want to know a distance, I don't expect the answer to the nearest 1000 miles, I expect much greater precision than that.

You claim a non-stop flight time between 10 and 11 hours between the two airports. I just checked flightradar24 and quickly found a couple of examples, one was just over 11 hours, the other 9 hours 15. They both use a Boeing 777 which has a cruise speed in the range mach 0.84-0.89. Now cruise speed varies with altitude and temperature and ATC may assign a common speed for separation in busy periods, so the aircraft might not be able to fly the speed they ideally want, but lets work some approximate figures out.

Cruising at 40,000 feet, mach 0.84 equates to 554mph and with a 9 hour 15 flight time, that gives a distance of ‭5,125 miles.

Cruising at 30,000 feet, mach 0.86 equates to 583pmh and with an 11 hour flight time, that gives a distance of 6,413 miles.

So that's 5,769 miles +/- 644 miles, i.e. +/- 11%

Plus or minus eleven percent! That's a level of accuracy you're comfortable with? The answer is certainly correct, the actual distance is 5487 miles, so well inside the range just calculated.

On those flights did the Captain announce the cruising speed or are you just making one up? If the captain did not announce a cruising speed did you ask the flight attendant what the cruising speed was or are you just making it up?

I'm using the range of cruising speeds quoted for this type of aircraft. I have no personal experience of that route.

Now lets have a look at Bing maps. You've used this for 15 years, never knew it had a distance measuring tool ("red pin"). Took me all of 5 minutes to discover that and I'm not a Bing user.

If you're not a Bing user then how are you using Bing to measure red pin distances?

Apologies, I should have been clearer. I'm not normally a Bing user, I've only recently started using Bing in order to address these Bing related topics.

You start off saying you trust Bing maps, now you've backtracked somewhat and you trust just the driving and walking distances. Out of interest, how do you measure walking distances, surely not with a GPS device?

There are many different ways. You can use a rolling measuring tape, GPS, you could walk along a road where you can use an odometer, you can use a bicycle odometer.

I was under the impression you had made measurements whilst walking and based your trust in Bing maps walking distances on measurements you took. Sure you can use all sorts of methods, which ones did you use is my question?

But Bing maps covers the whole world, most of which is covered in water, so what you are really saying is you trust Bing maps for the 30% of the earth which is dry land, but only the bits which have marked roads or tracks you can measure.

You claim without offering any evidence whatsoever that Bing maps distances (i.e. the ones you trust) are based on real world distances which include taking elevation into account. Where do you get this from?

From comparing predicted driving distances to my odometer when driving up and down steep hills in San Francisco multiple times.

But you've no idea whether elevation changes make any significant difference, you just think it does and you're not providing any evidence. I don't believe it does.

Of course none of this proves anything about how Bing actually goes about calculating driving or walking distances, but it certainly suggests that simply using the "red pin" method to calculate each segment of a path is giving the same answers.

And we've already established to everyone's satisfaction apart from yours that "red pin" is Haversine and Haversine is based solely on spherical trigonometry.

Show me one shred of evidence other than "This website says it so it must be true". Please keep in mind that I've personally developed websites at the request of the CEO which contained incorrect information. You don't seem to understand that this DOES happen.

Well now we're back to my offer to demonstrate 1 million comparison calculations (see my earlier comment).

[iamcpc]

Well isn't this the very thing I offered to do to convince you the documentation was accurate? I've already offered to write a test using 1 million data points, comparing Bing "red pin" with an independent implementation of Haversine. If I do that and the results support the documentation, will you then "believe that the red pin distances were based on the formula"? I'm still willing to do this if you want, but I don't want to waste my time if it doesn't get us anywhere.

If you had 1000 data points in which the results matches 1000 times out of 1000 the haversine formula then I would think that the bing map red pin distance calculator was based off of the Haversine formula

Sure, but in your example, your CEO told you to write something, you did, so the change was authorised all up the line. Of course a senior manager at Microsoft could do the same and in fact I can't see any other way this could happen. If the change was unauthorised, it would eventually be fixed and someone would be disciplined.

Authorized <> correct. Just because something was authorized does not make it true, accurate, or correct. It's very clear you never worked in web design because you would know that it's more common than you think it is.

Well how do you know they get the information from a Pilot. How do you know the pilot is giving correct information? What makes a pilot trustworthy? How do you know the ASI is giving an accurate speed? There's a whole chain of trust in there that you don't seem at all interested in questioning, yet in other areas you distrust what to everyone else seems rock solid evidence.

You take multiple samples. You track multiple flights. If everything all points to about the same number then you can formulate that you are most likely correct.

Yes I do believe the distance is between 5000 and 6000 miles

I take my hat off to you. You've built an entire belief system based on a staggeringly varied set of criteria for your standards of evidence

I'm using the range of cruising speeds quoted for this type of aircraft. I have no personal experience of that route.

Then I strongly suggest you get more accurate numbers instead of just making some up or estimating them.  There might be flight tracking websites. You might be able to call the airline and ask what the average cruise speed is.

Now lets have a look at Bing maps. You've used this for 15 years, never knew it had a distance measuring tool ("red pin"). Took me all of 5 minutes to discover that and I'm not a Bing user.

If you're not a Bing user then how are you using Bing to measure red pin distances?

Apologies, I should have been clearer. I'm not normally a Bing user, I've only recently started using Bing in order to address these Bing related topics.

I was under the impression you had made measurements whilst walking and based your trust in Bing maps walking distances on measurements you took. Sure you can use all sorts of methods, which ones did you use is my question?

I have used a use a rolling measuring tape, GPS, I've driven a route that I've walked along the street and used my Car odometer, I've used wearable fitness trackers, and for a while I wore a pedometer which also tracked distance.

But you've no idea whether elevation changes make any significant difference, you just think it does and you're not providing any evidence. I don't believe it does.

If i'm changing in elevation my odometer is tracking that change in elevation too.

Well now we're back to my offer to demonstrate 1 million comparison calculations (see my earlier comment).

I have yet to see even a sample size of one let alone 1 million.

[stack]

Sure, but in your example, your CEO told you to write something, you did, so the change was authorised all up the line. Of course a senior manager at Microsoft could do the same and in fact I can't see any other way this could happen. If the change was unauthorised, it would eventually be fixed and someone would be disciplined.

Authorized <> correct. Just because something was authorized does not make it true, accurate, or correct. It's very clear you never worked in web design because you would know that it's more common than you think it is.

I have worked extensively in web design and your posit is more of a personal ethical one rather than evidence of human behavior at large. I was Director of Product Development at a small start-up a few years back. My CEO wanted traffic numbers for a board meeting a press release. We were seeking round C funding as the runway was getting short. I gave him the traffic numbers and he asked me to "gussie" them up. The operative word was 'up'. I refused because that would be just out and out lying and people might make some serious life altering financial decisions based upon falsified data. He relented and we went with the correct numbers I had. That's the ethics of the scenario and I trust that more of humanity follow that path rather than doing something nefarious just because someone senior asked them to.

As to the larger question at hand, your need to see the source code and have someone walk you through it in order to believe that the documentation is correct, literally applies to every citation anyone ever has about anything. That seems extreme, unfounded, and unfortunate.

Well now we're back to my offer to demonstrate 1 million comparison calculations (see my earlier comment).

I have yet to see even a sample size of one let alone 1 million.

Have you not been reading this thread? I and others have given you multiple "samples" all of which show that Bing Maps uses spherical trig in it's distance calculations just like their documentation states.

[iamcpc]

I have worked extensively in web design and your posit is more of a personal ethical one rather than evidence of human behavior at large. I was Director of Product Development at a small start-up a few years back. My CEO wanted traffic numbers for a board meeting a press release. We were seeking round C funding as the runway was getting short. I gave him the traffic numbers and he asked me to "gussie" them up. The operative word was 'up'. I refused because that would be just out and out lying and people might make some serious life altering financial decisions based upon falsified data. He relented and we went with the correct numbers I had. That's the ethics of the scenario and I trust that more of humanity follow that path rather than doing something nefarious just because someone senior asked them to.

Then you know, first hand, how incorrect or inaccurate things can make it to a website.

As to the larger question at hand, your need to see the source code and have someone walk you through it in order to believe that the documentation is correct, literally applies to every citation anyone ever has about anything. That seems extreme, unfounded, and unfortunate.

Just like it seems extreme unfounded and unfortunate to believe everything that you read on the internet. I prefer to take things I read online with a grain of salt.

[stack]

I have worked extensively in web design and your posit is more of a personal ethical one rather than evidence of human behavior at large. I was Director of Product Development at a small start-up a few years back. My CEO wanted traffic numbers for a board meeting a press release. We were seeking round C funding as the runway was getting short. I gave him the traffic numbers and he asked me to "gussie" them up. The operative word was 'up'. I refused because that would be just out and out lying and people might make some serious life altering financial decisions based upon falsified data. He relented and we went with the correct numbers I had. That's the ethics of the scenario and I trust that more of humanity follow that path rather than doing something nefarious just because someone senior asked them to.

Then you know, first hand, how incorrect or inaccurate things can make it to a website.

Yes, I know how they could, especially at a funding starved start-up trying to make their numbers look good. But again, in my scenario, I refused to lie and I trust most people would too. You have obviously not worked at a large company and been responsible for web content as that is a completely different animal. I was a Dir of Prod Development for the web (one of a dozen or so) for a a fortune 250 company for several years. When my team produced any sort of documentation, whether simple help menus to full on dev 'how-to's' when interfacing with our data, API's and product, whether the documentation was customer facing or internal, it all had to go through many, many vetting stages. Internally on my team to make sure the documentation was accurate, well written and understandable. Then off to Legal and compliance for their review to make sure nothing was open to a mis-interpretation/liability. Even Marketing would have to "blue line" (provide approval) to make sure we were 'on Brand'. Nothing was ever published that didn't pass all of these barriers - All of which is standard practice at any large firm. Whether it be an Adobe, a Fidelity or a Microsoft. It's not the wild west like a little start-up may be. I find your argument that someone at Microsoft could go rogue and publish something that was patently false laughable. And then you'd have to summon up some sort of motive. Why would they make a false claim that they use spherical trig in their calculations when they actually don't? That makes zero sense.

As to the larger question at hand, your need to see the source code and have someone walk you through it in order to believe that the documentation is correct, literally applies to every citation anyone ever has about anything. That seems extreme, unfounded, and unfortunate.

Just like it seems extreme unfounded and unfortunate to believe everything that you read on the internet. I prefer to take things I read online with a grain of salt.

No one is saying you should believe everything on the internet. That would be absurd. But using logic, as humans, we can determine the veracity of a lot of things based upon source, reputation, and motivation. Microsoft (or anyone at Miscrosoft) has zero motive to claim that when you interface with their product the output is based upon X calculation/algorithm when that is a straight up false statement. If it were false, then the output would not be correct. And as we've shown you in several samples which you continually fail to acknowledge the output from Bing Maps is exactly what would be expected as stated in their documentation. Why you can't wrap your head around the evidence is very confusing.

Why don't you do a little leg work and create some samples to see for yourself?

[ChrisTP]

When it comes down to it, it's kind of a basic skill to figure out what is a credible source of information on the internet. Microsoft is a credible source of information. The company has a reputation to uphold and I doubt that some slackjaw moron is in charge telling employees at microsoft to lie on the documentation and if that were the case it would have been leaked. I trust Microsoft more than I'd trust random people on the internet (especially this corner of the internet). So iamcpc, microsoft is saying one thing and you are saying they could be lying, I trust them over you in this situation for sure. Not only that, Bing maps matches other maps on the internet, including open source maps. All of which are stated to be a map of a globe earth. That you worked in some company you wont name had a ceo that tried to make you lie is anecdotal at best (if you aren't lying about it that is). I have worked in a microsoft company, granted it was a game dev company so not related to Bing maps, but their procedures company wide are strict and the hierarchy isn't flat. Everything is peer reviewed and approved by multiple layers in the hiarchy and a lot of people are involved. It would have circulated pretty fast that the map was all a lie and actually based on a flat earth, it would 100% have been leaked by now.

Basically what I'm saying is if every map developer out there that people use every day is claiming it's a globe and you are claiming otherwise, who do you think we're going to side with? I'm siding with the people who know what they're doing, they've proven themselves, they have documentation to back up real world uses for their services. You have nothing to backup any claim of a lie so maybe move on and try to come up with a new argument.

As a side note talking of microsofts maps and game development, they've kind of merged the two in Microsofts Flight Simulator 2020. I'd be interested for flat earthers to play that game when it comes out.

[iamcpc]

You have obviously not worked at a large company and been responsible for web content as that is a completely different animal. I was a Dir of Prod Development for the web (one of a dozen or so) for a a fortune 250 company for several years. When my team produced any sort of documentation, whether simple help menus to full on dev 'how-to's' when interfacing with our data, API's and product, whether the documentation was customer facing or internal, it all had to go through many, many vetting stages. Internally on my team to make sure the documentation was accurate, well written and understandable. Then off to Legal and compliance for their review to make sure nothing was open to a mis-interpretation/liability. Even Marketing would have to "blue line" (provide approval) to make sure we were 'on Brand'. Nothing was ever published that didn't pass all of these barriers - All of which is standard practice at any large firm. Whether it be an Adobe, a Fidelity or a Microsoft. It's not the wild west like a little start-up may be. I find your argument that someone at Microsoft could go rogue and publish something that was patently false laughable. And then you'd have to summon up some sort of motive. Why would they make a false claim that they use spherical trig in their calculations when they actually don't? That makes zero sense.

Are you serious? You just said this:

My CEO wanted traffic numbers for a board meeting a press release. We were seeking round C funding as the runway was getting short. I gave him the traffic numbers and he asked me to "gussie" them up.

I don't know what company you worked for but in every company I worked for if the CEO told you to do something, and it was not a felony, you did it. If the CEO says jump you say "How high". If you can't understand how, after having something like this happen to you, someone else might say "yes boss" i'm very sorry.

Why don't you do a little leg work and create some samples to see for yourself?

Because what formula is, or is not, used to estimate the distances between two red dots on an online map is not high on my list of things to work on.

[robinofloxley]

Much earlier in this discussion I proposed a methodology to attempt to confirm the use of Haversine in the getDistanceTo API method, verifying the claim made in the documentation. I asked you whether you (iamcpc) thought the methodology I proposed was sound and whether you would accept the results. You declined to comment.

Since then, I've returned to this point again and again, finally offering to write the code to do this myself. All I asked in return is that if you find no fault with the method, then you accept the results.

I was hoping you'd say something on the lines of "OK, the method looks sound, if I can't fault the code, I'll accept the results". But no, you've just avoided engaging with this suggestion.

A more cynical person than myself might think that you're unwilling to risk painting yourself into a corner you cannot find a way to escape from.

However despite the offer you've never taken me up on, you continue to insist nobody has shown you any corroboration...

Yes I would [believe the documentation]. If their website said their calculation was based on a formula and someone set up a set of data points, say 100,  which were based on the formula and compared those to 100 red pin measurements from Bing and all of them matched then I would believe that the red pin distances were based on the formula.

Now this 100 data point test seems remarkably similar to the 1 million data point test I've been proposing all along.

If you had 1000 data points in which the results matches 1000 times out of 1000 the haversine formula then I would think that the bing map red pin distance calculator was based off of the Haversine formula

OK so you've upped the requirement from 100 to 1000, that's OK. But again this is the very test I've been proposing all along.

At this point, all I can do is write the code and demonstrate it. I'm sure you'll find some way to claim you never agreed this was a fair test, so it doesn't count, but I'll go ahead anyway.

Just to be clear:

• Bing maps distance measuring tool uses the getDistanceTo API method. How do we know this? Microsoft have published code (note code not documentation) showing that this is how you measure the direct distance between two points.
  
• The methodology works by generating random pairs of locations, using Bing's getDistanceTo and an independently developed implementation of Haversine to calculate two distances and then compare them. These distances aren't always going to be identical because Haversine makes extensive use of trig functions and floating point arithmetic and there are bound to be errors with precision and rounding in the real world of computers. However the discrepancies should be minute. I'm proposing that if all of the pairs of distances are within 0.01% of each other then we consider them matched.
  

I've included the code as an attachment. Here's how you run it.

• Go to https://www.bing.com/api/maps/sdk/mapcontrol/isdk/layerevents#TS
• With the "TypeScript" tab selected and highlighted in green, delete the existing script code and paste in the code I've given you.
• Press the "play" button in the green circle on the right hand side  to run.

In the "printout" window you should see something like this:

Comparison between 1000000 locations
Min variation 0.0mm
Max variation 5.0mm
Avg variation 2.5mm
Min variation(%) 0.0
Max variation(%) 0.00019
Avg variation(%) 2.5e-8
Min dist 2km
Max dist 20035km
Avg dist 10016km

Min/max/avg variation is the smallest/largest/average discrepancy between a Bing distance and an independent Haversine distance. As you can see, the biggest discrepancy found in 1 million comparisons was 5mm.

Min/max/avg variation(%) is the smallest/largest/average percentage discrepancy, i.e. the discrepancy as a percentage of the distance measured. As you can see the biggest was 0.00019%, so 100x smaller than my proposed 0.01% threshold.

Min/max/avg distances are the smallest/largest/average distance in km between the randomly generated pairs of locations.

I encourage you to try this for yourself and examine the code. Obviously since the locations are randomly generated, each time you run, you should expect to get slightly different results, but the overall picture is the same, no more than a 5mm discrepancy between distance of up to 20,000km. There is no doubt. Bing uses Haversine.

[iamcpc]

• With the "TypeScript" tab selected and highlighted in green, delete the existing script code and paste in the code I've given you.

You have given me no code.

I encourage you to try this for yourself and examine the code.

I can't. You have not given me any code.

Obviously since the locations are randomly generated, each time you run, you should expect to get slightly different results, but the overall picture is the same, no more than a 5mm discrepancy between distance of up to 20,000km. There is no doubt. Bing uses Haversine.

Are you serious?

It's like saying this online hypotenuse calculator uses the Pythagorean Theorem. If you plug in A and B then the C only has one answer. One very precise answer. Only one.  If you plug in a hundred billion sets of data into this calculator they will match the EXACT distance down to the one spetillionth of a nanometer 100% of the time. Regardless of the distance.


It's like plugging the number 3 and 4 into this thing and having it spit out 24.9999995 Well then that's irrefutable PROOF that this thing is not using the Pythagorean Theorem because if you put the numbers 3 and 4 into the Pythagorean theorem the answer for the hypotenuse is 25 not 25.0000005 not 24.999998.


I think that it's clear that Bing maps is using something pretty similar to the Haversine formula but pretty similar is not the same just like if you plugged 3 and 4 into a  Pythagorean Theorem api and got the number 24.9999995 then it's using something similar to the Pythagorean Theorem but NOT the Pythagorean Theorem

[robinofloxley]

• With the "TypeScript" tab selected and highlighted in green, delete the existing script code and paste in the code I've given you.

You have given me no code.

I encourage you to try this for yourself and examine the code.

I can't. You have not given me any code.

If you are logged in, you should see this at the top of my post (to be clear, my previous post, not this one):



That paperclip icon is supposed to indicate that there is an attachment to the message. Then at the bottom of my message, you should see..



And if you click on the "Haversine.txt" it should allow you to download the attachment. It's a simple text file containing the code. If you still can't see it, say so and I'll just post the code into the message, it's not that long.

Obviously since the locations are randomly generated, each time you run, you should expect to get slightly different results, but the overall picture is the same, no more than a 5mm discrepancy between distance of up to 20,000km. There is no doubt. Bing uses Haversine.

Are you serious?

It's like saying this online hypotenuse calculator uses the Pythagorean Theorem. If you plug in A and B then the C only has one answer. One very precise answer. Only one.  If you plug in a hundred billion sets of data into this calculator they will match the EXACT distance down to the one spetillionth of a nanometer 100% of the time. Regardless of the distance.

All real numbers (as opposed to whole number integers) in computers are inexact because these numbers are stored in memory locations of a fixed number of bits, so if you have an inexact number such as √2 you can only hold a finite number of digits. Numbers like √2 and pi are irrational and the number of digits stretch out to infinity. No computer can hold an infinite number of digits. If you think about it, you've probably heard in the news from time to time that someone has broken the previous record for calculating the most digits of pi. It's taken them a lot of time on a supercomputer to do this, so no, your average home computer doesn't have an exact value for pi or √2.

The more you manipulate these numbers, the more the errors accumulate.

You can see this in either a real or an online calculator. Start with 2 and keep taking the square root again and again, say 20 times. Then apply x² 20 times and see if you get back to 2. If calculations were exact, you absolutely would, you could do it thousands of times and you'd still get 2. But they aren't exact.

The implementations of Haversine in Bing and the independent one I'm comparing it with are not going to be line for line identical, they have been written by different people, so it is inevitable that they will both accumulate errors, but not identical errors, hence the results won't match 100%. Personally if two people measured a line of 20,000km and they came up with answers 5mm apart I would be pretty impressed.

And just to take your example of the hypotenuse calculator, what exactly is C going to be if A=1 and B=1? Actually I'll let you off if you give me the first 100 million digits of the answer. According to WikiPedia the current best answer to this question is from a guy called Ron Watkins who has worked it out to 10 trillion digits, so I'm really letting you off lightly you know.

[stack]

You have obviously not worked at a large company and been responsible for web content as that is a completely different animal. I was a Dir of Prod Development for the web (one of a dozen or so) for a a fortune 250 company for several years. When my team produced any sort of documentation, whether simple help menus to full on dev 'how-to's' when interfacing with our data, API's and product, whether the documentation was customer facing or internal, it all had to go through many, many vetting stages. Internally on my team to make sure the documentation was accurate, well written and understandable. Then off to Legal and compliance for their review to make sure nothing was open to a mis-interpretation/liability. Even Marketing would have to "blue line" (provide approval) to make sure we were 'on Brand'. Nothing was ever published that didn't pass all of these barriers - All of which is standard practice at any large firm. Whether it be an Adobe, a Fidelity or a Microsoft. It's not the wild west like a little start-up may be. I find your argument that someone at Microsoft could go rogue and publish something that was patently false laughable. And then you'd have to summon up some sort of motive. Why would they make a false claim that they use spherical trig in their calculations when they actually don't? That makes zero sense.

Are you serious? You just said this:

My CEO wanted traffic numbers for a board meeting a press release. We were seeking round C funding as the runway was getting short. I gave him the traffic numbers and he asked me to "gussie" them up.

I don't know what company you worked for but in every company I worked for if the CEO told you to do something, and it was not a felony, you did it. If the CEO says jump you say "How high". If you can't understand how, after having something like this happen to you, someone else might say "yes boss" i'm very sorry.

The absurdity here is that you have made up a whole "What if..." scenario based upon zero evidence. For one, just because you did something unethical when asked to do so by your CEO you believe that others would do the same. For two, this entire scenario you've conjured up is ridiculous. Your argument is, what if Steve Balmer was hovering over the Bing Maps technical writer's cube and saying, "Ok, there, when you're describing the GetDistance API put something in there about using a Haversine calculation, I know it doesn't, but do it anyway because I said so..." That is a completely manufactured scenario based upon not just zero evidence, but zero motive. Like I said, absurd.

Why don't you do a little leg work and create some samples to see for yourself?

Because what formula is, or is not, used to estimate the distances between two red dots on an online map is not high on my list of things to work on.

Well, you've been given plenty of evidence/samples as to how the distance is calculated using spherical trig and you have provided zero evidence as to how it doesn't. Therefore, the only endpoint is that Bing Maps works the way the Bing Maps people say it works. So that is just that.

[iamcpc]

And just to take your example of the hypotenuse calculator, what exactly is C going to be if A=1 and B=1? Actually I'll let you off if you give me the first 100 million digits of the answer. According to WikiPedia the current best answer to this question is from a guy called Ron Watkins who has worked it out to 10 trillion digits, so I'm really letting you off lightly you know.

 If the hypotenuse calculator used distances of over a billion millimeters  the answers would match down to the millimeter. In this situation they do not match when measuring distances of significantly less than a billion millimeters. How you are unable to understand that this is math and when putting variables into a formula there is only ONE possible correct answer. The answer is correct or incorrect.

If variables are plugged into formula A and the answer is 1 and then plugged into formula B and the answer is 1.000005 then they are NOT the same formula. Period. Case closed.

The absurdity here is that you have made up a whole "What if..." scenario based upon zero evidence. For one, just because you did something unethical when asked to do so by your CEO you believe that others would do the same.

I've been developer conferences and spoken with other people who have also knowingly published incorrect information to websites.

For two, this entire scenario you've conjured up is ridiculous. Your argument is, what if Steve Balmer was hovering over the Bing Maps technical writer's cube and saying, "Ok, there, when you're describing the GetDistance API put something in there about using a Haversine calculation, I know it doesn't, but do it anyway because I said so..."

No. My scenario is that the VP(or CEO or Director)  over the web developer team said: "Put this block of text on the website" and the web development team said "sure. No problem". 

That is a completely manufactured scenario based upon not just zero evidence, but zero motive. Like I said, absurd.

Seriously? There are websites out there claiming that the news is read by lizard people. I say yeah don't trust everything that you read on the internet and find out for yourself. I've professionally put inaccurate information on a website before.

You're response, is actually defending these claims having done no research on them whatsoever, even after experimental evidence has been presented which shows that the distances from website A's haversine formula calculator don't match the Bing website "haversine" formula calculator.

[GreatATuin]

And just to take your example of the hypotenuse calculator, what exactly is C going to be if A=1 and B=1? Actually I'll let you off if you give me the first 100 million digits of the answer. According to WikiPedia the current best answer to this question is from a guy called Ron Watkins who has worked it out to 10 trillion digits, so I'm really letting you off lightly you know.

 If the hypotenuse calculator used distances of over a billion millimeters  the answers would match down to the millimeter. In this situation they do not match when measuring distances of significantly less than a billion millimeters. How you are unable to understand that this is math and when putting variables into a formula there is only ONE possible correct answer. The answer is correct or incorrect.

If variables are plugged into formula A and the answer is 1 and then plugged into formula B and the answer is 1.000005 then they are NOT the same formula. Period. Case closed.

Do you have any idea how floating point calculations work? Are you really nitpicking to the point you're arguing it's not the same formula, but a totally different formula that somehow gets the same results within a 0.0002% margin of error?

Surely you can't be serious? Would such a small difference change anything to the underlying model, and to the point that Bing uses calculations based on a spherical Earth?

[robinofloxley]

And just to take your example of the hypotenuse calculator, what exactly is C going to be if A=1 and B=1? Actually I'll let you off if you give me the first 100 million digits of the answer. According to WikiPedia the current best answer to this question is from a guy called Ron Watkins who has worked it out to 10 trillion digits, so I'm really letting you off lightly you know.

 If the hypotenuse calculator used distances of over a billion millimeters  the answers would match down to the millimeter. In this situation they do not match when measuring distances of significantly less than a billion millimeters. How you are unable to understand that this is math and when putting variables into a formula there is only ONE possible correct answer. The answer is correct or incorrect.

If variables are plugged into formula A and the answer is 1 and then plugged into formula B and the answer is 1.000005 then they are NOT the same formula. Period. Case closed.

Well lets use millimeters then. A=1,000,000mm, B=1,000,000mm, what is the exact value of C?

Bear in mind that 1,000,000mm is exactly 1km, so this is exactly the same question as asking A=1km, B=1km, what is C?

I don't care what answer you write down for this, your answer is wrong. If you write down an answer to the nearest billionth of a nanometer, I can always add one extra decimal to that to make the answer more accurate. Give me 1 trillion decimal places and I can make the answer more accurate. So if you point me to any hypotenuse calculator in existence, whatever answer it gives, I can give you a more accurate one. That's the issue with this particular problem, the actual answer has an infinite number of decimal places, there is no such thing as ONE possible correct answer in your example. There is a theoretical answer and that's obviously in this case √2km, but since you can't ever write that down as a number, neither can you get a calculator or computer to compute it either.

And if you insist on using a billion millimeters, well I'll just invent a new unit, the kilo-kilometre (kkm) and then the problem is just A=1kkm, B=1kkm, what is C?

[stack]

The absurdity here is that you have made up a whole "What if..." scenario based upon zero evidence. For one, just because you did something unethical when asked to do so by your CEO you believe that others would do the same.

I've been developer conferences and spoken with other people who have also knowingly published incorrect information to websites.

For two, this entire scenario you've conjured up is ridiculous. Your argument is, what if Steve Balmer was hovering over the Bing Maps technical writer's cube and saying, "Ok, there, when you're describing the GetDistance API put something in there about using a Haversine calculation, I know it doesn't, but do it anyway because I said so..."

No. My scenario is that the VP(or CEO or Director)  over the web developer team said: "Put this block of text on the website" and the web development team said "sure. No problem". 

Again, absurd. Why? What's the motive? Do you believe that everything you've ever read in a book, in a manual, on the web, on a street sign, is subject to the same level of skepticism you're applying here to Microsoft's own documentation about its own product? Absurd.

That is a completely manufactured scenario based upon not just zero evidence, but zero motive. Like I said, absurd.

Seriously? There are websites out there claiming that the news is read by lizard people. I say yeah don't trust everything that you read on the internet and find out for yourself. I've professionally put inaccurate information on a website before.

Just because there are websites, newspapers, magazines, books, etc., that claim there are Lizard people you somehow extrapolate that notion in some equal manner to Microsoft documentation about its own product? Absurd.

Professionally putting inaccurate information out to the public is by no means professional. You possess a certain moral flexibility that I do not. I hardly see your lack of ethics as any argument over the rest of humanity even if you found some like minded individuals at a conference. It's not an argument for anything, just a statement about yourself and your integrity.

You're response, is actually defending these claims having done no research on them whatsoever, even after experimental evidence has been presented which shows that the distances from website A's haversine formula calculator don't match the Bing website "haversine" formula calculator.

You're the one who has done no research. I already gave you the Hong Kong to SFO research I did and Bing matched other spherical trig centric map sites to the exact mile. So I don't know what you're going on about.

Just face the facts and all evidence (of which you have provided none) that Bing Maps uses spherical trig in it's distance calulations. Case closed.

[iamcpc]

Well lets use millimeters then. A=1,000,000mm, B=1,000,000mm, what is the exact value of C?

I'm not asking for the EXACT value of C i'm asking for the correct answer down to the millimeter. Which your information has CLEARLY demonstrated that the calculations are not the same providing VERY clear evidence that the claims made on the Bing website are not 100% accurate. Or they are vague intentionally.

Again, absurd. Why? What's the motive? Do you believe that everything you've ever read in a book, in a manual, on the web, on a street sign, is subject to the same level of skepticism you're applying here to Microsoft's own documentation about its own product? Absurd.

You really can't say these claims are absurd when, per your claims, this happened to you in real life. I could say that your claims are absurd but that happened to me too.  This is an example of how you are wrong.

Just because there are websites, newspapers, magazines, books, etc., that claim there are Lizard people you somehow extrapolate that notion in some equal manner to Microsoft documentation about its own product? Absurd.

Have you not seen the comparisons? They are not the same. They are different. Yet you still make these claims. This is another example of how you are wrong.

Professionally putting inaccurate information out to the public is by no means professional. You possess a certain moral flexibility that I do not. I hardly see your lack of ethics as any argument over the rest of humanity even if you found some like minded individuals at a conference. It's not an argument for anything, just a statement about yourself and your integrity.

Hmm. Professional:
engaged in a specified activity as one's main paid occupation rather than as a pastime.
I got paid to put incorrect information on a website as part of my main paid occupation rather than as a pastime therefore I did it professionally.
A third example of how you are wrong.

Just face the facts and all evidence (of which you have provided none) that Bing Maps uses spherical trig in it's distance calulations. Case closed.

Then tell me why the numbers don't match from another website who claims to use the same formula?

[stack]

Again, absurd. Why? What's the motive? Do you believe that everything you've ever read in a book, in a manual, on the web, on a street sign, is subject to the same level of skepticism you're applying here to Microsoft's own documentation about its own product? Absurd.

You really can't say these claims are absurd when, per your claims, this happened to you in real life. I could say that your claims are absurd but that happened to me too.  This is an example of how you are wrong.

Absolutely it's absurd. You're taking a scenario that happened to you and some others and have extrapolated it across to everyone who has ever published anything. That is absurd

Just because there are websites, newspapers, magazines, books, etc., that claim there are Lizard people you somehow extrapolate that notion in some equal manner to Microsoft documentation about its own product? Absurd.

Have you not seen the comparisons? They are not the same. They are different. Yet you still make these claims. This is another example of how you are wrong.

How is it any different? Can someone not put something false in a book, newspaper, magazine, or road sign when their superior tells them too? Is the web the only media vulnerable to the propagation of falsehoods? Of course not. But by your standards anything and everything published through any media platform is subject to the possibility that a superior made a subordinate publish a lie. In doing so, I can't imagine you ever leaving your house as you could never trust anything. You can't take the bus anywhere because the manufacturer's technical manual is suspect; a superior might have made a writer lie about, maybe, how often the brakes should be serviced. Or plane's technical specs/manuals. or a cars, etc. That documentation may be in HTML. Oh lordy me, not HTML!

Your argument is absolutely absurd.

Professionally putting inaccurate information out to the public is by no means professional. You possess a certain moral flexibility that I do not. I hardly see your lack of ethics as any argument over the rest of humanity even if you found some like minded individuals at a conference. It's not an argument for anything, just a statement about yourself and your integrity.

Hmm. Professional:
engaged in a specified activity as one's main paid occupation rather than as a pastime.
I got paid to put incorrect information on a website as part of my main paid occupation rather than as a pastime therefore I did it professionally.
A third example of how you are wrong.

Professional: characterized by or conforming to the technical or ethical standards of a profession

I don't think you conformed to the ethical standards of a profession at all. Quite the contrary. You broke the ethical bounds, I did not. You acted unethically, not professionally, by perpetuating/publishing a lie.

Just face the facts and all evidence (of which you have provided none) that Bing Maps uses spherical trig in it's distance calulations. Case closed.

Then tell me why the numbers don't match from another website who claims to use the same formula?

In my Hong Kong to SFO example, I compared Bing's haversine GetDistance API return to another sites distance calc which uses a similar but slightly more accurate Vincenty's formulae, both spherical trig, and came up with the exact same mileage.

Like I said before, just face the facts and all evidence (of which you have provided none) that Bing Maps uses spherical trig in it's distance calulations. Case closed.

[robinofloxley]

Well lets use millimeters then. A=1,000,000mm, B=1,000,000mm, what is the exact value of C?

I'm not asking for the EXACT value of C i'm asking for the correct answer down to the millimeter. Which your information has CLEARLY demonstrated that the calculations are not the same providing VERY clear evidence that the claims made on the Bing website are not 100% accurate. Or they are vague intentionally.

Oh you are not asking for the exact value? You just need it to the nearest millimetre and then you'll be happy. 5mm is too much, but to the nearest 1mm is OK.

Well then it's your lucky day. It occurred to me that one possibility is that Bing is just simply reporting the answer with fewer decimal places than the independent version of Haversine, which would lead to a discrepancy between the answers. So I went back to the code and experimented, changing the number of decimal places to try and get closer to whatever Bing are using. And I hit paydirt!

Take the code I gave you (you do have it now don't you, I see someone has downloaded it successfully, hopefully it was you) and replace line 74 with:

Code: [Select]

updateStats(Math.round(d1 * 100000.0) / 100000.0, d2);  // Update stats for the two distances calculated
These are the results I get with that modification in place:

Comparison between 1000000 locations
Min variation 0.0mm
Max variation 0.0000036mm
Avg variation 4.0e-7mm
Min variation(%) 0.0
Max variation(%) 2.2e-14
Avg variation(%) 3.9e-15
Min dist 7km
Max dist 20026km
Avg dist 10021km

As you see, the max variation over a test of a million comparisons has gone down from 5mm to 0.0000036mm or 3.6 nanometers if you prefer.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you said you wanted it down to the nearest 1mm, so you should be happy with 3.6 nanometers.