An absolute location is designated using a specific pairing of latitude and longitude, a Cartesian coordinate grid (e.g., a Spherical coordinate system), an ellipsoid-based system (e.g., World Geodetic System), or similar methods.
An example would be the longitude and latitude of a place. For instance, the position of Lake Michigan, USA, can be expressed approximately in the WGS84 coordinate system as the location 10.65°N (latitude), 71.6°W (longitude). It is, however, important to remember that this is just one way to describe its position; a small number of the alternative ways can be seen here.
Absolute Location is a term which has no real meaning, since all locations must be expressed relative to something else. For example, longitude is the number of degrees east or west of the Prime Meridian, a line which has arbitrarily been chosen to pass through Greenwich, London. Similarly, latitude is the number of degrees north or south of the Equator. Because latitude and longitude are expressed relative to other lines, a position expressed in latitude and longitude is a relative location.
Famous quotes containing the word absolute:
“An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis. We call intuition here the sympathy by which one is transported into the interior of an object in order to coincide with what there is unique and consequently inexpressible in it. Analysis, on the contrary, is the operation which reduces the object to elements already known.”
—Henri Bergson (1859–1941)