cartesian - w3toppers.com

How to fit a 2D ellipse to given points

This can be solved directly using least squares. You can frame this as minimizing the sum of squares of quantity (alpha * x_i^2 + beta * y_i^2 – 1) where alpha is 1/a^2 and beta is 1/b^2. You have all the x_i’s in X and the y_i’s in Y so you can find the minimizer … Read more

Converting longitude/latitude to X/Y coordinate

The big issue with plotting maps is that the spherical surface of the Earth cannot be conveniently converted into a flat representation. There are a bunch of different projections that attempt to resolve this. Mercator is one of the simplest: it assumes that lines of equal latitude are parallel horizontals, while lines of equal longitude … Read more