User talk:PrototypeZ

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San Gorgonio
Hello, thanks for the addition of San Gorgonio to the article List of peaks by prominence. As fairly common for US peaks, it seems that this particular peak uses two different sources for its data. Its Wikipedia page cites the North American Vertical Datum of 1988 as its source for the elevation and cites Peakbagger for its source on it's prominence.

The problem is that it should always be the case that, elevation - key col = prominence, as explained at topographic prominence. But when we mix sources, it doesn't always work out that way and we wind up with either key cols that are stated differently from what the sources say, or we get math that doesn't add up. Choose your poison.

Another source not mentioned Peaklist.org uses the old USGS elevations to compare with its key col data so they avoid mixing apples and oranges. here is a quote from the peaklist site:


 * "OLD ELEVATION: The "New Elevations" may be interesting in their own right, but they aren't useful for prominence calculations.  This is simply because all of our saddle data is based on topographic maps that used the older, NGVD29, vertical datum.  Since prominence is a measurement of the difference between two values, it will be more accurate to compare apples and apples." – Peaklist.org

In the past I have been mildly admonished for trying to explain all this in notes on individual mountain articles. The problems it creates are sometimes admittedly minor, such as this case, but there are other greater discrepancies out there.

As for the parent peak, the Peakbagger source states neither Mount Whitney or Olancha Peak, but rather Cirque Peak as its line parent. I don't at the moment have a better source for the parentage, but in the meantime, my recent changes are at least consistent with the San Gorgonio WP article.

Thanks again for your contributions and for reading my ramblings. -- Racer X11 Talk to me Stalk me  02:33, 14 August 2014 (UTC)