User talk:AlliterativeAnchovies

Comparison of total distance traveled between Ingenuity and Perseverance
You added a comparison of the total distance traveled between Ingenuity and Perseverance in the Ingenuity helicopter page. It is in the format of a picture. Now, Ingenuity's 10th flight has occurred and the picture is not updated. Can you please update the picture? Talk with me 19:16, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Sure; I was waiting for NASA to update their “Where is Perseverance” page (which is where I get the data I use to generate the image) - I hadn’t forgotten about this, I promise :) It looks like they’ve updated it now (it wasn’t this morning) so I’ll go ahead and generate an updated version, should be less than an hour and I’ll’ve updated it, sorry for delay.  AlliterativeAnchovies (talk) 19:30, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

It’s been updated now. You may have to clear your cache to see the updated version. Hope this helps :) AlliterativeAnchovies (talk) 20:17, 31 July 2021 (UTC)


 * please update this upto 12th flight(13th flight is not on “Where is Perseverance” page), AlliterativeAnchovies please Chinakpradhan (talk) 16:54, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

I wish I could, but I need it to be updated there - the graph is generated using the same dataset that they use to generate the “Where is Perseverance” page, so without it I can’t make the graph :( (In theory I could try to manually create the dataset based on what they say on blogs and twitter, but the problem with this is that it won’t be completely accurate - for example on their flight log they say flight 9 was 625 meters, but this is actually a rounded version of the true number, 631.79 meters. The “Where is Perseverance” dataset uses the exact, true numbers)

I’m sorry I’m not able to help here! They usually update it within a couple of days, although it took them 2 weeks to update it last time so it may take longer :(

P.S. I’ve always really appreciated your work on creating and keeping up to date the Perseverance rover traverse path image - thank you! :) AlliterativeAnchovies (talk) 05:56, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

It looks like they’ve updated the Where is Perseverance page now! I’ll pull the data and re-generate the graph, within the next few minutes it should be updated on wikipedia too :) AlliterativeAnchovies (talk) 08:43, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Actually they updated the helicopter’s position, but not its flight path. Unfortunately it’s their flight path dataset that has the distance encoded, the “waypoints” dataset doesn’t encode that info. Sorry :( I’ll check again in the near future to see if they’ve updated it. AlliterativeAnchovies (talk) 08:49, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Flight 13 has been added now; graph is updated through Sol 200 now (previously was at Sol 180) AlliterativeAnchovies (talk) 09:06, 13 September 2021 (UTC)


 * @AlliterativeAnchovies, i forgot this discussion so you meant that wip is not real flight path. it includes the vertical lift also
 * or
 * is it the correct flight path? Chinakpradhan (talk) 13:39, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
 * and nasa flight log is inaccurate?? Chinakpradhan (talk) 13:39, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the confusion! At the time, I meant that NASA hadn't updated all parts of their datasets - they had updated the waypoints dataset, but not the distance dataset.  With the waypoints dataset, it is possible to calculate the distances - but I haven't written the code to do that (nor do I plan to), which means I had to rely on the distance dataset.  I can't remember if they had updated the nasa flight log at the time, so I don't remember if it was inaccurate or not when we had this conversation.
 * However, the flight log does seem to not give the correct numbers, so it's not suitable for use in the graph since using it would lead to slowly growing errors over time. You can see the dataset here  if you want to compare for yourself.  Flight 9 in the flight log is 625 meters, but in the dataset is 631.79 meters.  I'm pretty sure that the difference is just that for the flight log they sometimes decide to round the numbers.
 * At one point in time, I did think this difference might have been because only one dataset included vertical lift. However, if I remember correctly Ingenuity flies straight up, then horizontal, then down.  So if that were the case, we would expect all the differences to be exactly 2*h, where h is the height that Ingenuity flies.  That does not seem to be the case, so I think that it only includes horizontal lift.  I am not sure though.
 * P.S. I will update the distance graph soon - and I'll try to do a more in depth investigation to see if I can better answer your question (although no promises - I probably won't figure anything out) AlliterativeAnchovies (talk) 17:16, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

No I Don't know how to update the graph. I have left the graph for you to update if time prefers you. Currently I am asking if I should put the WIP flight lengths in Wikipedia "list of flights"  log table. For now I have put the WIP lengths in table if you think it's unsuitable I will revert. But please just say which is precise one and the one that we should follow, flight  log or wip one?? Chinakpradhan (talk) 17:55, 22 March 2022 (UTC)


 * I believe the WIP one is correct. AlliterativeAnchovies (talk) 18:56, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

So I am using those values for table from now. Chinakpradhan (talk) 01:22, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

All values are good but for flight 6 flight log says 215 but wip says 202.22. Range of approximation is too far. Even the flight log "Shift southwest about 150 m (490 ft), southward about 15 m (49 ft), northeast about 50 m (160 ft)". How to compensate this difference Chinakpradhan (talk) 01:55, 23 March 2022 (UTC)


 * I have gone through and manually calculated the distances based on the longitude/latitude, they are:
 * Shift Southwest: 140.9 meters
 * Southward: 14.1 meters
 * Northeast: 46.8 meters
 * Which adds up to 201.8. This is much closer to the wip values of 202.22.  I think the reason my number is different than their number is the precision; the calculator I used (available online here ) only gives one decimal point, whereas NASA seems to have used two.  (Well, that cannot be the whole reason - if you do the math again but add .09 meters to all my values, it would still be slightly smaller - but maybe they used higher precision latitude/longitude values as well? I don't know).
 * So I would say that you should trust the wip values; I think NASA is giving flight log numbers for the general audience because they look prettier, but the more accurate numbers are in the wip dataset. If you use flight log values, it's probably better to say "about 215 meters", and if you use wip values you can just say "202 meters".  Hope this helps! AlliterativeAnchovies (talk) 10:56, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Ok thanks implementing changes Chinakpradhan (talk) 15:34, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

BTW what values should I use in place of this
 * Shift Southwest: 140.9 meters
 * Southward: 14.1 meters
 * Northeast: 46.8 meters Chinakpradhan (talk) 15:37, 23 March 2022 (UTC)


 * I don't think I understand your question; I'll try to answer it but I apologize if my answer doesn't make sense:
 * You can either use those values (140.9, 14.1, 46.8), or the ones on the flight log (150, 15, 50) - it's completely your choice. I don't know if the calculation we did to get (140.9, 14.1, 46.8) counts as 'original research' or not - it's a routine calculation from NASA data so it should be fine, but that's the only issue I can think of that might happen if you use (140.9, 14.1, 46.8).  If you use (150, 15, 50) then you should probably say ("about 150", "about 15", "about 50") in the article. AlliterativeAnchovies (talk) 16:23, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

No no you took the other way I meant is (140.9, 14.1, 46.8) ok to be used in table or I need a more precise one? And if it is available can you say that. You told (140.9, 14.1, 46.8) sums up to 201.8 if a value summing more closer to 202.22 was there it had been even better,. Thank you. Chinakpradhan (talk) 16:49, 23 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Ah, ok - I understand. I think the values you are using are precise enough.  If you want more precision, though, I did some work here:
 * I re-ran the computation with higher precision, and get (140.9438, 14.0982, 46.7869) which adds up to 201.8289. This is still not 202.22, but the reason why I think is because a difference of 0.000001 in the latitude can result in a difference of .03 meters.  The highest precision data I have is precise to 0.00001, so every measurement can be up to 0.15 meters off.  Thus, the total measurement can be 0.45 off, which is true in this case.  (Actually, the truth is slightly more complicated - the measurement can be off a bit more, but it's more complicated to explain).
 * Unfortunately, I do not have access to higher precision data. As far as I can tell, the most precise data NASA currently provides is the data I used.  You might be able to get more precise data if you use NASA's SPICE toolkit, but it's really hard to use.  I cannot do that for you because I don't understand how to use it - but if it's important to you then you can probably ask a question about it on one of the Stack Overflow websites and they can help.
 * I think the best solution I think is just to give all of these values rounded to the nearest meter: (141, 14, 47) - this adds to 202. If you do that, everything works out nicely I think. AlliterativeAnchovies (talk) 17:38, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Ok thanks a lot Chinakpradhan (talk) 08:54, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

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Adding info on "Comparison of distance" chart and possible typo
Hi, I saw that you created the map that compares the various distances traveled by rovers on Mars Mars rover. I'd like to advise you to add a sort of legend to make the map a little more readable, with the date on which the data is updated and the numbers of the various distances travelled.

Also, on the map it seems that Ingenuity traveled about 22-23 km, while NASA states that it traveled 13, why this discrepancy? https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/#Flight-Log Briskola (talk) 10:43, 29 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your comment! I'm happy to update the legend; how does this look https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Mars_Rover_Comparison_Distance_Graph.svg?
 * The Ingenuity discrepancy is indeed very weird! I am grabbing the data directly from NASA (https://mars.nasa.gov/mmgis-maps/M20/Layers/json/m20_heli_flight_path.json).
 * One theory is this: the data for Ingenuity does not report total distances. This is not true for Perseverance/Curiosity, where NASA's data does report it.  Instead, for the Ingenuity data I have to sum up the distances done by each flight.  This can lead to inaccuracies, especially if done over a long time.  However, the inaccuracies should not be this big! (Opportunity/Spirit also suffer from this problem, but by the end it is off by ~1% so it does not show up on the graph).
 * I will have a trawl through the raw data. Since there are only 60 flights, I can manually check their lengths for any outliers.  Will hopefully have this resolved by end of day :)  Thanks for noticing this.
 * AlliterativeAnchovies (talk) 10:58, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
 * After a quick look, something is deeply weird with NASA's JSON data. (see table in this reply).
 * It seems that the JSON Data is always roughly twice as large as the flight log. Both of these sources are NASA!!  Annoyingly, just copying the data from the flight log is not a good solution, because
 * 1) I would have to manually do it
 * 2) The numbers do not have high precision (now that flight lengths are quite long, this is less of an issue)
 * I will investigate the problem more, but do not know when I'll have an answer.
 * (TABLE DELETED because it broke my talk page!)
 * AlliterativeAnchovies (talk) 12:04, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Okay, final update for today; it seems that the two data sources match up starting with Flight 50, which happened in April 2023. We can look through the history of the Perseverance Distance Graph (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Perseverance_Distance_Graph.svg) to see that, between its updates in November 2022 and June 2023, Ingenuity's distance curve seems to have retroactively increased.  Furthermore, looking through this talk page, I can find a quote from past me:
 * > for example on their flight log they say flight 9 was 625 meters, but this is actually a rounded version of the true number, 631.79 meters. The “Where is Perseverance” dataset uses the exact, true numbers
 * The "Where is Perseverance" dataset is the JSON dataset I was referring to; now, that same dataset claims flight 9 was 1181 meters. Thus:
 * 1) Something happened between November 2022 and June 2023 that corrupted the previous data, probably when Flight 50 was added to the dataset.
 * 2) The Flight Log is slightly inaccurate as well, since it seems they inconsistently round the numbers.
 * Solution: Not really sure.
 * AlliterativeAnchovies (talk) 12:25, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Found the error: As mentioned, their dataset got corrupted sometime early this year. Thankfully, based on this post https://mastodon.social/@65dBnoise/109849238576685982, I found another, un-corrupted dataset https://mars.nasa.gov/mmgis-maps/M20/Layers/json/m20_heli_waypoints.json.
 * I have fixed this now :) Thanks for catching it!
 * AlliterativeAnchovies (talk) 14:05, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

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