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Creating a Map Based on Distances Between Cities

Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:03:51 -0800

Mapping question: I have a list of (imaginary) cities. I also know each city's as-the-crow-flies distance from every other city on the list. Based on this data alone, I would like to create a (hypothetical) map that shows all of these cities in their proper locations. I recognize that that the map's "rotation" would be arbitrary based on where & how you start plotting, but it seems that you should be able to plot out the relationships between cities properly. Is there software that can help me do this? To be a little more concrete, imagine that you have a mileage chart similar to this one. (That chart contains driving distances, but let's assume we have as-the-crow-flies distances instead.) If you pick an arbitrary starting point for one city, you can then plot out where every other city belongs, because you know how far each city is supposed to be from all the other cities.

I can envision at least one simple way to do this manually if you have just a handful of cities. But if you have a lot of cities, it becomes harder and harder. So I'd love to know if there is software that can calculate and draw such a map automatically. (Note: Using latitude/longitude is not an option - the scenario only involves knowing as-the-crow-flies distances between imaginary cities.) Thanks!

How far is that from here?

thrako — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 17:35:56 -0800

How are the distances between stations on the DC Metro website calculated? They do not appear to be tunnel, walking/driving, or even straight-line (great circle) distances. For example, this page gives "distances" between Metro Center and all other stations in the Metrorail system. It says the distance to Rosslyn is 1.36 miles, but the straight-line distance between the stations is more than 2 miles (according to this site and this site). Several other station-pairs appear to have the wrong distances listed. It seems to be worse for stations that are far apart. Some station-pairs have listed distances that are larger than the straight-line distance, which makes a little more sense. I am inclined to think the Google Maps distances are more or less correct, so how did WMATA calculate the distances on the website?

5300 miles equals what, hive mind?

Dr. Lurker — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 21:13:12 -0800

Where else could my dog and I have driven 5300 miles to? There are a plethora of "calculate distance between point a and point b" websites. But, what if I want to find out the geographic circumference of a circle with radius 5300 miles? So, essentially I want to pretend I can drive across any surface (earth, water, space etc) in a 5300 mile straight trajectory from point US zipcode 48912. Where would I be? If not that specific then how about a calculation of 5300 miles = the linear distance between commonly known point a and commonly know point b.

Back story for those interested:

Spent my two week holiday break driving all over hell (MI to northern CA, northern CA to NM, NM to MI) with my dog. Ended up logging 5300+ miles. I can understand it in terms of the path I took. I want to try to conceptualize this many miles in the terms of other distances. I realized it was a long distance while watching the rose bowl parade and al roker noted that the hawaiian h.s. marching band had traveled 2400 miles and the ecuadorian band had gone a 2100 miles by bus. i would have preferred to have "driven" to either of these places.

Where to get postcodes and map them to distances?

reklaw — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 05:16:55 -0800

I'd like to store people's postcodes and work out distances between them. I think I need a postcode-to-coordinates database, and then a way of working out the distances... So, two questions really:

1. Where can I get a database mapping postcodes to latitude and longitude (or some other better co-ordinate system)? Free is the best price, but not essential, and the UK is the most important place to cover, but as many as possible would be nice.
2. Once I had such a thing, how would I go about working out the distances between postcodes with it?

PS. This is for a free project, not a business or my job or anything.

Meet Me in the Middle

Carsey — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 12:04:37 -0800

Is there a map program or website that selects a midpoint between 2 or more locations? I often need to meet people around town (LA) and am in frequently need to pick a central meeting place between 2-4 people with offices over wide distances. Any suggestions?