NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Robin Stuart
Date: 2020 Feb 2, 10:53 -0800
Geoffrey you wrote:
"Seems to me that a letter to the Sky & Telescope pointing out the several deficiencies of the article is in order."
A letter has been sent and Roger Sinnott is on the case.
I'm not sure that it will result in a printed correction. In my experience they are pretty good at ignoring mistakes. Recently I sent a letter pointing out that in the December 2019 edition an otherwise engrossing article entitled Just Over a Century Ago opens with the inspirational words "A few years ago, it was said that the sum total of human knowledge doubled every five years, but today it seems more like exponential growth".
Lest there be any doubt something that doubles every 5 years is growing exponentially. If t is the time in years the growth factor is 2^(t/5) = exp( ln(2) t / 5 ) = exp( 0.1386 t ).
No response.
Robin Stuart
