Dilution of Precision

a.k.a. DOP, a.k.a. PDOP, HDOP and VDOP. And, in some very special cases, TDOP, but i haven't seen that one and have no idea what's it good for.
What they are and how to make heads (but not tails) of them.

In today's GPS applications, you will see those values under "precision". Plus, if you happen to be writing a GPS application, you will see them in NMEA messages. When people compare their GPS receivers, they compare precision by DOP (at least I and my friend did).
But unless the application is pretty clever, it won't tell you the actual position error, only the DOP values. And, unless you as a programer are pretty clever, you can't read the actual position error from the GPS receiver! Which is slightly worse.

So. As some of you probably already noticed, DOP stands for Dilution of Precision. HDOP is Horizontal DOP (that is latitude and longitude), VDOP is Vertical (altitude). PDOP is Positional, which is an overall measure containing both horizontal and vertical, and TDOP is Time DOP, which doesn't seem to be good for anything useful.
In various sources you can find that DOP values are dimensionless and they express "geometric strength" of satellite configuration. And that lower is better.
Which is all nice, but doesn't tell you anything about what the hell those numbers mean.

So here goes: DOP values are coefficients. That is the most important thing to know about them. To obtain the position error range in some meaningful units, e.g. metres, you multiply the GPS receiver's precision by the DOP value.

That's all there is to it. Just take a DOP, multiply it by a known value, and there you go, now you have a meaningful number. Piece of cake, really. Why couldn't they tell you earlier, right?

Alright, i confess, that's not all. This is where the real fun begins.

For one, there seems to be no way of determining your GPS unit's precision. It certainly won't tell you through NMEA. So you can either read the full-of-propaganda manual, or take an educated guess.
My educated guess, based on GPS system properties and quality of today's receivers, is that average precision is 5 metres. In fact, my favourite GPS app, TrekBuddy, shows HDOP x 5 m as an error range. And for openWIG I'm going to do the same.

And for two, while some receivers (such as my NaviLock BT-451 with uBlox Antaris4 chip) exclude signal strength from DOP (that is technically correct approach, since DOP is geometric strength), others apparently count it in (technically wrong, but way more useful).
Either that, or SiRF starIII chip's geometric capabilities are way below Antaris's. What's a poor guy like me to think, eh?

Anyway, now you know what a DOP is. Have fun dealing with it, I certainly will.