I fail to use the outcome of scipy's pdist function. I am interested in the real geographic distance (preferred unit: km). Take the following coordinates:
from scipy.spatial.distance import pdist
coordinates = [ (42.057, -71.08), (39.132, -84.5155) ]
distance = pdist(coordinates)
print distance
# [ 13.75021037]
But what's the unit? Google says the distance between these two points is 1179 km. How do I get there from 13.75021037?
Using the latest Python 3, this now gives a deprecation warning. I actually found this answer by @cffk much easier to understand:
(pasting here for convenience)
>>> from geopy.distance import geodesic, great_circle
>>> p1 = (31.8300167,35.0662833) # (lat, lon) - https://goo.gl/maps/TQwDd
>>> p2 = (31.8300000,35.0708167) # (lat, lon) - https://goo.gl/maps/lHrrg
>>> geodesic(p1, p2).meters
429.1676644986777
>>> great_circle(p1, p2).meters
428.28877358686776