[APG Public List] [APG Members] place names

[Stephen Danko]

John,

I agree with the points you make.  Someone else wrote to me off list with the 
same concerns.  I haven't thought this problem completely through.  For now, as 
a general rule, I plan to use coordinates to one decimal place to specify a town 
or village.  If I have an exact address (or location of a tombstone), I'll use 
four or five decimal places.  Even these plans have their faults.  In any case, 
if I write a narrative that includes coordinates, I will take your advice 
and explain my intent.  Perhaps something as simple as "Coordinates expressed to 
one decimal place denote a general area.  Coordinates expressed to four decimal 
places denote an exact location" might be sufficient.

By the way, where the heck is our esteemed colleague Randy Seaver?  His 
background and expertise is just what is needed for this discussion!

Stephen J. Danko
http://www.stephendanko.com/


________________________________
From: John <john at jytangledweb.org>
To: apgpubliclist at apgen.org
Sent: Tue, October 26, 2010 9:42:50 PM
Subject: Re: [APG Public List] [APG Members] place names

Stephen,

What you say has truth in it, but in practice one might not
make the leap that the number of significant figures presented
means that the uncertainty is in the next decimal place.
In scientific publications one always attempts a computation
of RMSD (root mean square deviation) and write it with a +/-
to prevent confusion. Like 37.79507 +/-0.00005
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