Utility of Trek's Star Map Graphics

[ahkyahnan]

Maybe this is related to why Starfleet people can apparently make sense of screens full of random numbers.

That's taking the graphics too literally. Remember, these graphics aren't created with the intention that viewers will actually be able to read them in detail. All that's needed is to give the impression that there's something written there, but instead of going to the trouble of writing it, TV/movie graphic illustrators often just throw in random text. On Trek, they use random numbers instead. But it's logical to assume that in the "reality" of the Trek universe, the buttons and charts have meaningful written text.

A little off-topic, but I think a screen with nothing but numbers could still be meaningful. I'm not sure it's even unusual.

I'm an accountant, and we use 7 digit codes for accounts, 5 digit codes for departments, and different 5 digit codes for products. Working with them everyday they're as familiar to me as text. So for example.....

6144000-30002-W0002-30000.00

.....is as immediately meaningful to me as anything written in text.

It indicates the Professional Services account in the Human Resources Benefits department allocating $30,000 to the 2nd major product line.

And most of our Excel spreadsheets, Access databases & other financial data systems really do look like this. Since almost everything in Trek, from engineering calibrations to personnel ID numbers to star coordinates to internal deck location ID's, are expressed as numbers, I'm not sure the screens in "real-life" wouldn't look pretty much as they do on TV.

Maybe some of our resident astronomers have similar but more relevant analogies?

Mark

 

[FalTorPan]

...Of course, with just three objects of interest on the map, we could assume it is always rotated so that those three lie on the same plane (and background grids be damned).

Of course. I just wanted to give a simple example.