A statistical approach to latitude measurements: Ptolemy's and Riccioli's geographical works as case studies

Santoro, Luca

doi:10.5194/hgss-8-69-2017

Articles | Volume 8, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/hgss-8-69-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hgss-8-69-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 8, issue 2

07 Aug 2017

| 07 Aug 2017

A statistical approach to latitude measurements: Ptolemy's and Riccioli's geographical works as case studies

Luca Santoro

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Dec 2025	24	23	2	49
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Cumulative views and downloads (calculated since 07 Aug 2017)

Month	HTML	PDF	XML	Total
Aug 2017	163	28	5	196
Sep 2017	53	11	2	66
Oct 2017	49	11	1	61
Nov 2017	69	9	2	80
Dec 2017	62	13	0	75
Jan 2018	45	14	2	61
Feb 2018	45	16	3	64
Mar 2018	33	8	0	41
Apr 2018	36	13	1	50
May 2018	48	11	1	60
Jun 2018	35	12	0	47
Jul 2018	35	3	0	38
Aug 2018	36	4	0	40
Sep 2018	32	11	1	44
Oct 2018	29	2	0	31
Nov 2018	43	13	0	56
Dec 2018	32	6	1	39
Jan 2019	37	12	0	49
Feb 2019	32	8	1	41
Mar 2019	37	6	1	44
Apr 2019	22	5	0	27
May 2019	22	8	0	30
Jun 2019	22	8	0	30
Jul 2019	28	9	2	39
Aug 2019	30	6	0	36
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Feb 2020	29	5	1	35
Mar 2020	23	9	0	32
Apr 2020	34	11	1	46
May 2020	13	6	0	19
Jun 2020	56	9	0	65
Jul 2020	54	32	33	119
Aug 2020	32	9	3	44
Sep 2020	39	5	0	44
Oct 2020	14	11	0	25
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Jan 2021	9	11	0	20
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Jan 2025	10	9	3	22
Feb 2025	16	6	1	23
Mar 2025	19	5	3	27
Apr 2025	5	8	1	14
May 2025	8	8	1	17
Jun 2025	30	27	1	58
Jul 2025	7	12	2	21
Aug 2025	13	15	1	29
Sep 2025	28	8	2	38
Oct 2025	12	17	0	29
Nov 2025	22	16	4	42
Dec 2025	24	23	2	49
Jan 2026	30	47	3	80
Feb 2026	26	15	3	44
Mar 2026	22	4	5	31

Latest update: 19 Mar 2026

Short summary

Historical geographical works typically contain many latitude measurements of locations: all show measurement errors and some of these refer to lost cities. How can we estimate errors? How can we know the right position of lost cities? This work shows a general approach to give a scientific answer to these questions in two particular case studies: Ptolemy's Geography and Riccioli's work on geography.