Recent Posts
There you go, you want a pretty big sample size. I'm offering a million and I ask you again, one more time, is one million enough for you?
I have read the Bing documentation and I believe it and I'm therefore so supremely confident in what Microsoft are telling me that I'm now offering to write the code for you to perform this test. One million random pairs of locations. I'll use the code for Haversine that GreatATuin linked to. I'll post all the code, instructions on how to use it and the results. Feel free to examine the code as much as you like, ask reasonable questions and I'll try and answer them. But at the end of the day I'm only doing this if you agree that it's a valid test and would settle the issue once and for all. What do you say?
Settle what issue exactly? If the Bing API has a high chance of using the Haversine formula (or something very similar to it) for calculating distances? Sure.
Although it's very clear that Bing maps has multiple different distance algorithms it uses.The distances that i have been able to independently corroborate don't appear to be using the same equations as the two point things.
hello,
Since industrial activity and air traffic have considerably slowed down due to the so-called “coronavirus”, the sky has suddenly turned blue again. The whole thing raises a number of issues about the formation of clouds, doesn’t it?
There you go, you want a pretty big sample size. I'm offering a million and I ask you again, one more time, is one million enough for you?
I have read the Bing documentation and I believe it and I'm therefore so supremely confident in what Microsoft are telling me that I'm now offering to write the code for you to perform this test. One million random pairs of locations. I'll use the code for Haversine that GreatATuin linked to. I'll post all the code, instructions on how to use it and the results. Feel free to examine the code as much as you like, ask reasonable questions and I'll try and answer them. But at the end of the day I'm only doing this if you agree that it's a valid test and would settle the issue once and for all. What do you say?
Quote
Well I've already suggested that we can write a bit of code to check distances from Bing against an independant implementation of Haversine and do this for a sample size of 1 million random pairs of locations. Is that not a big enough sample size for you?
We can. This will just be more evidence that the earth is NOT a spheroid or an oblate spheroid. It must be some other shape.
It has been explained to you many times. The sphere is an approximation. The oblate spheroid is a better approximation. Any model is an approximation. Only the real thing is not an approximation, but it's not very convenient to measure large distances on the real Earth, it's not very practical to hold a rope between San Francisco and Hong-Kong and measure it, so we just use models. The sphere approximation is good enough to calculate distances within an acceptable margin of error.
You don't trust the API documentation? Fine. You can calculate yourself the distance between any two coordinates using the Haversine or Vincenty formula, and check if Bing gives the same result.
Haversine : https://www.movable-type.co.uk/scripts/latlong.html
Vincenty's : https://www.movable-type.co.uk/scripts/latlong-vincenty.html
The source code is included, and even implementations in other languages. If you find any pair of coordinates for which Bing indicates a distance that differ significantly, you'll prove Bing doesn't use these formulas.
It's been demonstrated to you with examples that the Microsoft documentation about the Microsoft product is correct. It's referred to as evidence and corroboration.
I have yet to see the Bing source code and have someone walk me through it.You, on the other hand, have provided no evidence to the contraryBingo! If I had evidence that it was wrong then I would think it was wrong.
Choose a large number of random pairs of locations (latitude and longitude), e.g. 1 million. Use the Bing API to calculate the distances between each pair. Repeat the calculations using some implementation of the Haversine formula (for which we do have the source code) and my contention is that the two sets of results will agree to a very high accuracy (e.g. < 0.01% difference).
So if your Bing distances are always 100% in agreement with a Haversine distance for any two locations then the underlying shape used by Bing cannot be anything other than a sphere.
Someone would need a pretty big sample size to start to believe that it's 100%.
Quote
Well I've already suggested that we can write a bit of code to check distances from Bing against an independant implementation of Haversine and do this for a sample size of 1 million random pairs of locations. Is that not a big enough sample size for you?
We can. This will just be more evidence that the earth is NOT a spheroid or an oblate spheroid. It must be some other shape.
So I punched in SFO (San Francisco International Airport) to HKG (Hong Kong International Airport) into a Great Circle Mapper tool on the web. Here is the result:
http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=SFO-HKG
The Haversine great circle Globe distance is 6,927 mi
I then went to Bing Maps and measured the same, SFO to HKG, and got this:
And guess what, same exact distance, 6,927 mi
What more proof do you need than this and Microsoft's own documentation that Bing Maps is using Globe calculations?
You asked the original question and then I replied to help clarify.I didn't. I haven't asked any questions here that weren't rhetorical.
And, now it seems your annoyed with my reply.You mistake pointing out a glaring hole in your argument for an expression of annoyance. Try to separate ideas and beliefs from emotions, it will help you along here.
I know that I will likely get a warning or get kicked off the site for saying this (and am ok with it)... but Pete, your only part of this FE movement because it makes you feel important and special as a moderator. But otherwise, you really don't bring much to the table. While I dont agree with Tom, I do have respect for him in that at least he joins in debates in a constructive manner. Your approach to a debate is you always seem annoyed and angry, too thin-skinned. You tend to nit pick questions as a kind of way to distract from the debate flow.I assure you I rarely am angry when I post here (or, rather, that I normally avoid posting here if something upsets me). I don't dance around subjects, and when you say stupid things, I simply point it out. After 10 years of hearing RE'ers raise the same non-starter issues while thinking they're original, responding to them becomes a bit robotic for many of us. Try to read my posts in a matter-of-fact tone - it might help.
You always seem kind of angry.
