[laputan_machine]

Aren't longitude/latitude co-ordinates even more precise? There's a bunch of free apps that give that information out. Am I missing something?

>I tried to get people to use longitude and latitude but that never caught on," Mr Sheldrick said.

Well, if it's a life or death situation Mr Sheldrick, I'm pretty sure people would catch on fairly quick

[JulianMorrison]

It's easier to say a string of words than a string of numbers. There's also more intrinsic redundancy against small mistakes, that with a co-ordinate could move the designated area by hundreds of miles.

I don't like the fact it's an opaque monopoly, but as a way to designate locations for human use, it's effective.

[johnday]

If you're in the UK, moving the area by hundreds of miles would be obviously detectable. If you said to the operator "I don't know where I am, somewhere in the New Forest" and then you gave them a long/lat in Newcastle, they'd know to check again. Given that phone towers connect emergency calls to local dispatchers, even saying roughly where you are isn't necessary.

Long-lat are highly effective precisely because almost anyone can read a number [including dyslexic people], and because the concept of a numeric pair as a GPS location is understood, at least in passing, by almost everybody.

[JulianMorrison]

And if you're in many places globally, particularly the backwoods, you could displace or misread a digit, point out a location well away from your position, and still be pointing at "a forest".

Anyone can read a number? Hardly. A huge number of people would have trouble getting all the digits, precisely and in order without mistakes.

Also, words have audio redundancy. If I say "apple" you get the same data as if I say "a_ple" or "_pple" or "app_e" or if you don't, you know there was a glitch and can ask for retransmission. That matters when eg: using a CB radio, or there's a blizzard blowing into a phone's pickup.

[johnday]

> Anyone can read a number? Hardly. A huge number of people would have trouble getting all the digits, precisely and in order without mistakes.

You only need 3 decimal places for ~100m accuracy. So really you're talking a 5 digit number and a 4 digit number (in the UK). A sensible presentation of that data would not be hard to read for almost anyone who doesn't have sight problems.

Moreover, a service like the theoretical "999.gov.uk" could log a person's GPS location and give them (say) a three word codephrase to pass to the dispatcher to lookup the record on the backend. No more or less effort, but not proprietary and harder to mess up.

> Also, words have audio redundancy. If I say "apple" you get the same data as if I say "a_ple" or "_pple" or "app_e" or if you don't, you know there was a glitch and can ask for retransmission.

This is true. I don't think there's a good way to fix that with numbers.

[ExBritNStuff]

Isn't the argument also that when tired, stressed, cold, and maybe even injured, it's easier to tell a 999/911 operator three English words you're used to, rather than a string of numbers most people don't have any context for.

[laputan_machine]

what context does 'bears.agitated.trampolines' mean? It has exactly the same amount of information as 53.958332, -1.080278, not only that but if you've _ever_ tried to say words over the telephone on a bad line, you end up having to do the NATO alphabet (did you say bears or chairs?), so you're reading out letters anyway. Not only _that_ but _everyone_ can plug long/lat co-ordinates into something and get an answer, they don't need a proprietary piece of software to achieve the same goal.

[ExBritNStuff]

"Bears... no, bears, you know like Yogi and Boo Boo. Agitated, like I'm getting now. Trampolines, those things you bounce up and down on".

And when I said context, I didn't mean that they would understand what those three words point to, but rather they instantly can read those words having read them before. Long/Lat for most people isn't something they have ever used, so simple things like the "-1" might get missed. Admittedly the operator is likely to know that '1.080278' doesn't make sense given the country they are in and will automatically add the -, but it doesn't hurt to have options?

[notahacker]

Trouble is, you can also get locations for "bared.agitated.trampolines" and "fear.agitate.trampoline", and playing a game of charades isn't necessarily more intuitive to a stressed person than reading out a string of numbers - like a telephone number....

[pure-awesome]

I was thinking the same thing.

I believe it's just easier for the average person to communicate three words than two multi-digit-precision numbers.