postgresqlearthdistance

Postgresql earthdistance - earth_box with radius


Please, can you explain me this behaviour of earth_box function ... or what I'm doing wrong?

data used

40.749276, -73.985643 = Empire State Building - is in my table
40.689266, -74.044512 = Statue of Liberty - is my current position in select - 8324m far from Empire State Building

my table

=> select id, latitude, longitude, title from requests;
 id | latitude  | longitude  |         title
----+-----------+------------+-----------------------
  1 | 40.749276 | -73.985643 | Empire State Building

distance from Empire State Building to Statue of Liberty

=> SELECT id, latitude, longitude, title, earth_distance(ll_to_earth(40.689266, -74.044512), ll_to_earth(latitude, longitude)) as distance_from_current_location FROM requests ORDER BY distance_from_current_location ASC;
 id | latitude  | longitude  |         title         | distance_from_current_location
----+-----------+------------+-----------------------+--------------------------------
  1 | 40.749276 | -73.985643 | Empire State Building |               8324.42998846164

My current position is Statue of Libery which is more than 8000m far from Empire State Buildng, but select return row with id 1 even when radius is only 5558m ! Can you explain me this behaviour or what is wrong?

=> SELECT id,latitude,longitude,title FROM requests WHERE earth_box(ll_to_earth(40.689266, -74.044512), 5558) @> ll_to_earth(requests.latitude, requests.longitude);
 id | latitude  | longitude  |         title
----+-----------+------------+-----------------------
  1 | 40.749276 | -73.985643 | Empire State Building

versions of extensions and postgresql

=> \dx
                                     List of installed extensions
      Name      | Version |   Schema   |                         Description
 ---------------+---------+------------+--------------------------------------------------------------  cube          | 1.0     | public     | data type for multidimensional
 cubes  earthdistance | 1.0     | public     | calculate great-circle
 distances on the surface of the Earth  plpgsql       | 1.0     |
 pg_catalog | PL/pgSQL procedural language

 => select version();
                                                                version
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  PostgreSQL 9.4beta2 on x86_64-apple-darwin13.3.0, compiled by Apple
 LLVM version 5.1 (clang-503.0.40) (based on LLVM 3.4svn), 64-bit

thank you noe


Solution

  • The problem here is that earth_box gets Statute Miles. 8324.42998846164 meters are near 5.172560986623845 statute miles Unit Converter

    The solution: convert the radius into Statute Miles units

    earth_box(ll_to_earth(40.689266, -74.044512), 5558/1.609) //doesn't return results

    earth_box(ll_to_earth(40.689266, -74.044512), 9000/1.609) //does.