SHCC WYSIWYG Article from December 2022

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This article was written by Don VanSyckel, the club president, as a part of "The President's Pen".  This article appeared in the December 2022 WYSIWYG newsletter.

Google My Maps

by Don VanSyckel

President's Pen (2022-12) by Don VanSyckel Winter is certainly knocking at our doors. I can wait for snow, how about you? At least now I have an excuse to hang out in my space and play computer. Officer elections were held at the November meeting and the officers for 2023 are: President - Don VanSyckel Vice President - Mike Bader Treasurer - Paul Baecker Secretary - open As those of you who attended the November meeting know, there was an issue with the scheduled presenter and I presented "Make Your Own Maps with Google MyMaps". The data that I used in the presentation was the addresses of SHCC members. Data is entered by putting in an address in the search bar. Once the addresses of interest are all entered the application can export the longitude and latitude of the map points. I took the longitude and latitude of all SHCC members (except for the two that list a PO Box instead of a home address) and averaged them. This yields the longitude and latitude of the geographic center of member homes. This location is on the north side of 16 Mile Road one half mile from VanDyke Avenue and Dodge Park Road near Maas Drive. The calculated location could have been anywhere, in the middle of a subdivision, in the middle of a pond, or someone's backyard. But coincidentally it is right on a road and a main road at that. A few years ago during a meeting site location hunt before the available of today's software and data, I calculated the geographic center of member's homes by using zip codes. I printed a zip code map and marked a point at the middle of every zip code zone of interest. I laid out an X and Y axis and measured the X and Y of each zip code zone. All this data was put into a spreadsheet and used to calculate the X and Y of the center. This center was on VanDyke Avenue at 16 1/2 Mile. Coincidentally, this is only 1/2 mile west and 1/2 mile north of the data calculated center location above. Note, previously I could have used members' street addresses instead of zip codes but that would have quadrupled the amount of work involve and I didn't have the time or energy to do this when the zip code method was good enough. The zip code method obviously has built in error since no member lives at the geographic center of their zip code zone where my measurement point was and the offset could be a couple miles or more. Some errors went plus and some errors went minus. The other change from before to now is in membership, while many members were in both studies some members in the previous study are no longer and some new members are included today that were not members -previously. Please be on time for the meeting, 10:00 AM. We have access to the room at 9:30 AM. We will end about noon and have access to the room until 12:30 PM. We have a three hour rental period. This month's presenter is SHCC member Paul Baecker. Paul will present "Spreadsheets 102: Intermediate". You might remember Paul did "Spreadsheets 101: Getting Started" in September and this is the next installment. Last Month: Last month SHCC member Don VanSyckel presented "Make Your Own Maps with Google MyMaps". Don used the SHCC member's home addresses to demonstrate this application. There was a lot of interest and a lively discussion took place.

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