> Ray Hintz for anything least squares or GPS related.
I'll never forget Ray Hintz telling us about the least squares function in a program called cmm he was presenting for us to use. This was a good 20 years ago.
He said about least squares:
"think of least squares as the bubbles in beer. You know those bubbles are good. you don't know why there are bubbles in the beer, how they got there, how they work. But you know they are good and you embrace them for you know they make beer good."
I do believe he understood the crowd he was teaching that day. We liked beer. Heavy math not so much. He knew our lingo. Although I'm sure he could do a bang up job presenting to a bunch of phd math geeks too.
Frank Willis puts on a great show regarding the Rapides / Grant Parish boundary dispute in Louisiana. Interesting topic, great speaker, funny. Highly recommend.
Also has a presentation using remote controlled helicopters to assist mapping and surveying. Very interesting!
Three of my favorites have already been listed but deserve to be mentioned again. Milton Denny, Gary Kent and Walt Robillard.
You're all great for providing so many good ideas. I've been privileged to hear several of these guys. Some I haven't yet. Thank you all for such good feedback. Keep it coming. I'm making a list. What I can't get this year might work for another year.
I enjoyed Dr. James Rielly a great deal.
Don't know if he's still part of the circuit.
Ralph
I'd agree about JB Stahl. When I was working on my dissertation which was "The Determination of the Ordinary High Water Mark of Confusing Natural Lakes," I corresponded with him about Great Salt Lake since it was in his area. A tiny water level change shifts the water boundary on parts of that lake by miles. We have a lot of that down in Louisiana. Out of the blue he provided me with a lot of relevant information, simply out of his interest. I was most pleasantly surprised and thankful.
I read the recent article about him in POB. I thought the format of of the article should have been more a direct article instead of Q/A like they do an astronaut or world famous person. I chuckled when I read it. Mediation in surveying is very important, and his is in an extremely good niche, well worth discussion across the country in his numerous seminars (which are apparently excellent). I hope to attend one in the future.