the center of the world (was Re: Check out O'Reilly's Open Source Convention Highlights)

[Alex Martelli]

"Konrad Hinsen" <hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr> wrote in message
news:m366df8mcy.fsf at chinon.cnrs-orleans.fr...
> "Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> writes:
>
> > to 'population centers'.  Of course I could get different
> > centers by choosing different weighing factors (country GNP
> > rather than country population, for example).
>
> Or by Python expertise ;-)

Know any freely available databases indicating latitude
and longitude of Python experts...?


> > Hmmm, if the coordinates were on a plane, finding the weighed center
> > would be trivial, but offhand I can't think of how to do it on a
> > sphere's surface -- I guess there must be some way more suitable
> > than just solving a generalized extremization problem -- can anybody
> > suggest one...?
>
> What's so bad about it? Searching for a global minimum in two
> variables is not so difficult. All the more within finite coordinate
> intervals. Of course there might be no global minimum at all.

Think positive -- there may be SEVERAL locations that are
global minima...


Alex