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Hi John, I've been slowing working through your posts and various replies in
this thread. I'll try to reply in more detail later. For now, at one point
you wrote, "terminology... screws up the concepts." In a later message, you
wrote, "the terminology traps George (and many others) into thinking that
the estimated latitude generates an approximation."

I do think that you've got a good point here, but it's going to be a hard
sell. First of all, I can guarantee you that the terminology has not
'trapped' George Huxtable. He understands this material inside and out at a
very deep level (and although George is temporarily lurking, I will add that
he is a tremendous asset to this group). The catch is that experts often
have a hard time remembering what it's like to be a beginner and unless
they've done some recent teaching at the beginner level, any concerns about
terminology are almost incomprehensible. I agree with you that many people
hear the expression "assumed position" and find it very confusing --for a
variety of reasons. I also agree that the approximations or lack of
approximations in many celestial navigation techniques are misunderstood
partly because of strange terminology.

Something else to consider in this St. Hilaire business. The use of
"plotting" on a little chart to get a positional fix caused a lot of worry
for late 19th century navigators. It seems as if many felt that it was
automatically less accurate than a trigonometric solution with log tables.
Very often, for example, Sumner's method was muddied up with logarithmic
equivalents which added no accuracy but seemed to do so because of the
computational biases of that era.

 -FER


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