A recent discussion on the Wattage Training Forum got me to hack the VE code to quantify the difference between the exact and small-angle version of the VE calculation.
The columns of the resulting CSV file are as follows:
SAMPLE #: row index SLOPE_EXACT,SLOPE_SA: exact and small-angle slope DELTA_EXACT,DELTA_SA: delta-elevation, exact and small-angle ELEV_EXACT,ELEV_SA: cumulative elevation, exact and small-angle
The final elevation numbers are as follows:
| SAMPLE # | ELEV_EXACT | ELEV_SA | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2978 | 8.51942653497284 | 8.55456417534516 |
Conclusion: The cumulative error on the final elevation of the ride is on the order of about 0.4% error.
Downloadable results and code are here.
