Talk:List of U.S. states by elevation

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List of U.S. states by elevation is a featured list, which means it has been identified as one of the best lists produced by the Wikipedia community. If you see a way this page can be updated or improved without compromising previous work, feel free to contribute.

This article desperately needs to have the elevations in US units - the current format means nothing to most of the people who live in the places catalogued. Bob Palin 23:13, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Bob. Also, the mean elevation data seems incorrect. Alaska having a mean elevation of 3,000+ m is incorrect, see [1]. -- hike395 05:05, July 23, 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs changing, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit any article by simply following the Edit this page link. You don't even need to log in! (Although there are some reasons why you might like to...)

The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or try out the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. --Allen3 ^talk 19:52, July 23, 2005 (UTC)

I certainly know how to edit pages but there are 1200 elevations listed on this page, it really needs a bot of some sort to do it, that I don't know how to do Bob Palin 21:31, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Bob (again!) This canned response (from {{sofixit}}) is useless. There is a lot of data on this page (hundreds of table rows): fixing it by hand would take me a long time, which I don't have. Checking the data by hand is going to be tedious. Was this page generated programmatically? If so, can whomever has the program check the data and regenerate the page with Imperial units? If not, perhaps someone can write a program to regenerate the page: I don't have time. -- hike395 21:32, July 23, 2005 (UTC)

No program or automation other than a straight forward cut and paste was used to create any of the tables. The information source used to create the tables was the data tables for each of the individual state articles (using the links in the first table). As not all of the state articles provide information in imperial units, but all provide metric values, the choice of units was predetermined by the information source. Once the alphabetically sorted table was created, the other tables were built by hand sorting a copy of the original tables data. I realize that this is not the magic wand you were wishing to have waved, but if you look at the articles history you can see how the various pieces were built up over time. --Allen3 ^talk 21:35, July 24, 2005 (UTC)

There's one canonical source for this data: The Statistical Abstract of the United States. This page should be a reflection of Table No. 351, Extreme and Mean Elevations by State and Other Areas, see [2]. That has both imperial and metric units, too. If someone doesn't get around to converting that to wiki, I'll do it eventually. -- hike395 01:53, July 25, 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 WP:FLC 2 Datum? 3 Map? 4 conversion errors? 5 Coordinate system or Vertical datum? 6 "U.S. states"?

[edit] WP:FLC

This article is excellent. I trust that the authors are thinking of nominating it on Wikipedia:Featured list candidates? -- ALoan (Talk) 17:20, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Datum?

I imagine all these heights are derived from USGS, so I guess that means they're expressed in terms of the NAD83 datum. If that's true (even for outlying points like Alaska and Hawaii) then I think the intro should link to it. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 15:50, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Sadly, not :-(. For the high points that I'm familiar with, these are the 1927 datum values. Someone changed the Mount Whitney elevation to the latest NAVD88 datum value. Not sure what to do. -- hike395 18:03, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Map?

Would it be worth producing an additional map showing the locations of the highest and lowest points? I was thinking of something much more schematic than the (excellent) topographic map, this time showing just the state outlines and having a blue and red mark indicating the lowest and highest points respectively. If there is support for this (and if there are geographic coordinates in the respective articles to allow me to do so) I can make the map (although not immediately, I confess). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 16:12, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

That would be so nifty! -- hike395 18:07, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

I'll put it on my wiki-todo list. To make the map accessible for visitors with colour-blindness, I think I'll draw the high points like a red ^, and the lows like that symbol upside down. Things get complicated where the low point is a coastline - I suppose I'll just colour the coast all blue and leave it at that. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:26, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Hey, I made an image [3]. I just red circles for high points, green squares for the low. For locations with low elevations on lake or ocean shores, I didn't not include them. What does everyone think? -- ChristopherM 21:58, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] conversion errors?

I've updated some of the state articles to match the elevation numbers from this list, and noticed some apparent conversion errors. For example Wyoming's highest point is listed as 13804 feet and 4210 meters (13804 feet is 4.2074592 km, and going the other way 4210m is 13812.336 feet). It looks like the data in the list is directly from [4], but it seems very odd that the feet and meters don't actually match. Anyone know why this might be so? -- Rick Block (talk) 18:08, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

And how about the strange values for Kentucky? The first instance on the page lists the elevation difference as 1184 m. Elsewhere in the page it's 2084 m. The larger number appears incorrect. Teratornis 04:44, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Coordinate system or Vertical datum?

This article uses the term "coordinate system" to describe the NGVD29 and NAVD88. I have never seen that term used to describe these vertical datums. Usually, a coordinate system defines a location in horizontal (x,y) space, such as the Lat/Lon, UTM, or State Plane coordinate systems. I suspect that the term is being misused here, and that "vertical datum" would be a more correct term, but I thought I would ask before making any changes. I don't frequently deal with vertical data, so it could be something I'm unaware of. - Justin 09:37, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "U.S. states"?

Ummm... I don't really know how to point this out, or whether by "fixing" it, I might break links to it, but... you do know that the "U.S." in the title stands for "United States," and that, therefore, the title reads, "List of United States states by elevation"...?

This title is wrong in another way: it's really a list of elevations by state, or elevations within the United States, not states by elevation.

rowley 23:34, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Article title is parallel to List of U.S. states by area, List of U.S. states by population, List of U.S. states by unemployment rate, List of U.S. states by traditional abbrevation, List of U.S. states by date of statehood, etc. ad nauseum. If you'd like to propose a different name for all of the articles, I would suggest proposing it at Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. States, although I predict a difficult argument, because you'll be claiming that the WikiProject itself is incorrectly named.

As for list of elevations: look at sections 2-5 --- those are, indeed, lists of states ordered by elevation, where elevation is defined slightly differently for each section. Only section 1 is a list of elevations by state.

hike395 00:27, 26 December 2006 (UTC)