A note on the errors involved in the calculation of elevations of the geoid

The paper discusses the errors likely to occur in calculations of the elevation of the geoid by Stokes’s formula when gravity data outside a given cap are neglected, and it is shown that they are comparable with the root-mean-square elevation. It is shown that these estimates and those of similar errors in deflexions of the vertical made earlier (Cook 1950) are not seriously affected by the assumptions made about the distribution of gravity anomalies between the harmonics up to degree 18.