Generate random coordinates around a location

Question

I\'d like to have a function that accepts a geo location (Latitude, Longitude) and generates random sets of coordinates around it but also takes these parameters as a part of th

Answer 1

Others have already explained the math you need. But I think the most problematic part is the performance. The brute force method to check the distances between the points can be good enough when you have 50 points only. But too slow when you have 1000 points or even more. For 1000 points this requires at least half a million operations.

Therefore my suggestion would be to save all randomly generated points into B-tree or binary search tree (by x value and by y value). Using an ordered tree you will be able to get the points which are in the area [x ± min_distance, y ± min_distance] efficiently. And these are the only points that need to be checked, drastically reducing the number of needed operations.