For me, it’s just already damn hard to make sure you can hear numbers correctly over the radio. In marginal conditions, it’s a hell of a lot easier to use numbers (and requires less time due to not having to repeat or ask for clarification).
Do I really want to be trying to say “arrows.midst.senses” over a handheld radio?
Really, there's all the research done (since the invention of early radio?) on what makes a phonetic alphabet or phonetic code usable in noisy conditions, and instead W3W effectively plants a field of rakes in front of blindfolded people.
I hold exactly the same opinion as you, however what is very telling us that the police and fire services love it. I think that's because of the accessibility of the system rather than the underlying algorithm or communication.
I am also coming to see w3w locations written more and more as a more accessible alternative to coordinates, especially in land sales and forestry situations.
I do particularly hate that government services and agencies are becoming reliant on a commercially licensed pattern. It does not tick the sustainability tickbox for me.
I hate it as much as I love it.
besides the greater public awareness of w3w amongst certain demographics compared to coordinates, they may be harder to hear, but it's much easier to read out three words correctly than it is 16-18 numbers
the thing with words is that they're easy to hear in context, but take them out of context and they're often indecipherable
perhaps a system that gives each square a coherent-sounding sentence could be tried, although I'm sure that would have its difficulties too
Ten numbers doesn’t sound much more difficult than three words to me.
Earth is about 2^49 square meters. If you want precision of ~8 square meters, you're going to need to convey 46 bits of information (or use an optimization that gives less resolution over oceans, etc, but that's only going to be a small win-- a bit or two).
46/3.3 = 14 digits, but the latitude/longitude coding is a little less efficient because it's not uniform. A plus code does it in 11 characters (not including the plus) worth each 4.32 bits =~ 47.5 bits.
Yes-- that's why I said it was 46 bits for an 8 square meter area (because this is about the size of area you care about for this problem-- W3W is 9 square meters).
> for 8m do log_10(2^47)
No, because 2^3 = 8, so one does log_10(2^(49-3)) and gets 13.8. 46 / 3.3 =~ 13.9 works because 1/log_10(2) =~ 3.3.
"arrows.midst.senses"
Will become "Alpha, romeo, romeo, oscar, whiskey, sierra. Mike, india, delta, sierra, tango. Sierra, echo, november, sierra, echo, sierra".