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Well, if I state that a helicopter takes off and travels "north" for "300 miles" what does that mean to you? Same question for "west," "south" and "east"?
That's a different question than the one upthread. If you're running laps around the pole, then you're going west for 300 miles, but you did not fly 300 miles west, you flew in a circle.
Do you really want chatbot outputs to be that sensitive to your exact phrasing, or would you prefer reasonable interpretations?
It's interesting you should make this point, because the OG puzzle question goes like this:
A hunter is tracking a bear. He travels 1 mile south; 1 mile east; 1 mile north and discovers he is in the same place he started. He then shoots the bear. What color is the bear?
The answer, of course, is "white." To me, that's both correct and a reasonable interpretation of "east." I take it you disagree?
I interpret them as "flies [to a point which is] 300 miles [to the] North [along the most-direct route]..." and "travels [along a path continuously facing] north for [a path length of] 300 miles". Compare to a winding trail: You can go 10 miles North by travelling North for 20 miles.
Both the bear and the helicopter are point-to-point (destination = distance+direction), while your followup question was path-based (travel mode and path, for a distance). The bear hunter walked in an equilateral triangle with approximately 119.9 degree corners.
If it had been "He travels south for one mile, east for one mile, and north for one mile", then it would be a 1 mile line, a 90 degree corner, a 1 mile arc with radius 1 mile, another 90 degree corner, then a 1 mile return line that's 122.7 degrees off from the first line.
I haven't mathed it out, but I suspect both versions involve the helicopter landing in New Jersey, but in different locations.
These are the same. For North and South, all meridians are great circles anyway. For East and West, following a rhumb line (keeping your bearing constant) 300 miles East or West gets you to a point that is 300 miles East or West. There's a shorter way to get to that point but that doesn't matter.
How would you describe a point at the same latitude as yourself, and 300 miles away (by great circle)? "302 Miles East"?
Yes, the exact distance would depend on the line of latitude of course.
So every point on this orange curve is the same distance from the yellow point? I don't think so.
86 degrees north is only 277 miles from the pole; going 850 miles in a wide range of northerly directions isn't well-defined there. That is, if I asked you from that point, "Where is a point 850 miles North?", there simply is no good answer, since there is by definition no point north of the pole.
Pick a better-behaved set of numbers and the "rhumb ring" (which doesn't seem to be a standard term) will touch the great circle ring in both the North and South directions. Every point on the "rhumb ring" will be the same distance from the origin in one particular compass direction.
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