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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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
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Feb 2018	45	16	3	64
Mar 2018	33	8	0	41
Apr 2018	36	13	1	50
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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
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Oct 2025	12	17	0	29
Nov 2025	22	16	4	42
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Latest update: 06 Dec 2025

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.