Re: distance from Easter Island to Chile

[Emanuel Berg]

Frank Stutzman <stutzman@cat2.kjsl.com> writes:

> As a realative newie to doing fancy things in emacs,
> I am amazed and amused that this 1) can be done at
> all, and 2) can be done so elegantly.

Thank you! Actually that is an extremely
straightforward implementation of the formula - but
nonetheless, yes, Lisp (and Elisp) is just *gorgeous*
from an aesthetic point of view, and it is very fast
for doing simple things.

Check out my update to the code in response to
Mr. Margolin's comments for some refinements.

> Or at least it looks it looks like it should be that
> should be the case.  For whatever reason, though,
> when I evaluate ...
>
> I get an answer of 4301.199

That's normal - this is a mathematical method to
calculate the distance between two spots on a
sphere. But the world of math isn't exactly the world
of - well, the world.

The distance figure I got from the web is the (much
more) accurate one, but I cannot say what methods are
behind it. Safe to say, it is less abstract/general,
and more practical.

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