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Stop using zip codes for geospatial analysis (2019)

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Re: Stop using zip codes for geospatial analysis (2019)

#111

Post by bluGill »

kstrauser wrote: post #96
bluGill wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The plus four changes all the time so it isn't feasable to know it. The use is large mailers can get a discount by looking it up and presorting mail. If the mail coming into my post office has my mail next to my next door neighbors that saves them a lot of time.

Is that still true? I would imagine any reasonably modern computer could map every physical address in a huge region to a (route number, stop number) pair. I wouldn't think the +4 would add a lot of value anymore.

The sort everything outgoing by where it goes on the truck is valuable. sure computers can sort but this is physical things and so mechanical limits apply.

Re: Stop using zip codes for geospatial analysis (2019)

#112

Post by wisty »

steezeburger wrote: post #84
nitwit005 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, unfortunately, their assertion that everyone knows their zip code is wrong. People often write a neighboring code, and the post office just delivers it. Similar issues for city name, of course.

This sounds like the person doesn't know the receiver's zip code. Why are you extending that to not knowing their own zip code? Are they mailing something to themselves?

People more or less mail themselves parcels all the time, with online delivery.

Re: Stop using zip codes for geospatial analysis (2019)

#113

Post by steezeburger »

wisty wrote: post #112
steezeburger wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like the person doesn't know the receiver's zip code. Why are you extending that to not knowing their own zip code? Are they mailing something to themselves?

People more or less mail themselves parcels all the time, with online delivery.

Ha you make an excellent point actually. I wasn't even thinking of that.

Re: Stop using zip codes for geospatial analysis (2019)

#114

Post by jonathanoliver »

ericrallen wrote: post #28
jonas21 wrote: post #14

ZIP codes are an emergent property of the mail delivery system. While the author might consider this a bad thing, this makes them "good enough" on multiple axes in practice. They tend to be: - Well-known (everybody knows their zip code) - Easily extracted (they're part of every address, no geocoding required) - Uniform-enough (not perfect, but in most cases close) - Granular-enough - Contiguous-enough by travel time…

This is a tangent, but addresses are also way more complicated than most people realize - especially if you’re relying on a user to input a correct address or if you need to support multiple countries, somewhere with unique addresses like Queens[0], or you need to differentiate between units of a specific street address that uses something other than unit numbers for a unit designation. At that point you need somethi…

Thanks for the shout-out. Founder of Smarty here.

Regarding article, it really depends on the use case of whether to use ZIP Code (TM), postal code, Canada Post Forward Sortation Area, lat/lon, Census Bureau block and tract, etc.

As has been noted, the ZIP Code is often good enough for aggregating data together and can be a good first step if you don’t know where to start.

Re: Stop using zip codes for geospatial analysis (2019)

#115

Post by jonathanoliver »

rented_mule wrote: post #64
ericrallen wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a tangent, but addresses are also way more complicated than most people realize - especially if you’re relying on a user to input a correct address or if you need to support multiple countries, somewhere with unique addresses like Queens[0], or you need to differentiate between units of a specific street address that uses something other than unit numbers for a unit designation. At that point you need somethi…

An annoyance for me is that I've yet to see any address validator get my current home address right. They all insist my address is on the road that leads to my road rather than my actual road. It's understandable that they can't be 100% accurate given the scale / complexity of addresses. Most sites/apps will let me override the validator, but a few won't. The most common ones that insist on using the wrong address ar…

Send your address to support@smarty.com and link to this HN thread. I’ll keep an eye watching out for it. I’d love to see what our system does with your address.

We have non-postal addresses and a lot of other mechanisms to help here. We also have contacts at the USPS and others to help fix addresses.

Re: Stop using zip codes for geospatial analysis (2019)

#116

Post by jonathanoliver »

killjoywashere wrote: post #81
rented_mule wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An annoyance for me is that I've yet to see any address validator get my current home address right. They all insist my address is on the road that leads to my road rather than my actual road. It's understandable that they can't be 100% accurate given the scale / complexity of addresses. Most sites/apps will let me override the validator, but a few won't. The most common ones that insist on using the wrong address ar…

Same! My wife ran a business from home during the pandemic and we actually went through the effort to work with Google Maps (they called us) to get it on the map. And of course USPS has no problem. But our address was originally a federal building with a letter, still only has a letter, no number, and there are now all sorts of work-arounds floating around on how resolve addresses in our neighborhood. What's wild is…

I just replied to an earlier message on this thread with the same offer:

I’d love to have you email your mailing address to support@smarty.com with a link to this HN thread. We may be able to help fix some of this.

Re: Stop using zip codes for geospatial analysis (2019)

#117

Post by temporallobe »

I don’t really see the problem but at the same time I understand it’s not a perfect solution. I used to do geospatial work using ESRI products and Zip codes polygons are very useful because people use are often interested in things inside of zip codes especially partial 3-4 digit zip code area, but they are occasionally non-contiguous so you can end up with strange results, visually and mathematically (for example how do you find the “center” of a non-contiguous shape? You don’t).

Edit: I wanted to point out that I recall that ESRI maps used to come “out of the box” with zip code polygon layers. While I agree they are technically not polygons in the strictest sense, they often are or they are fully closed shapes or close enough to it - and even if they are missing a few nodes to make a complete polygon, whoever did the digitizing probably manually closed the loop so to speak. Remember, geospatial maps are used for many different purposes, likely none of them having anything to do with postal routes, so in that sense they are “good enough” for most purposes.

Re: Stop using zip codes for geospatial analysis (2019)

#118

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

temporallobe wrote: post #117

I don’t really see the problem but at the same time I understand it’s not a perfect solution. I used to do geospatial work using ESRI products and Zip codes polygons are very useful because people use are often interested in things inside of zip codes especially partial 3-4 digit zip code area, but they are occasionally non-contiguous so you can end up with strange results, visually and mathematically (for example ho…

There actually are algorithms that compute the centroid of multi part polygons. So you can in fact find the center of a non-contiguous shape. Now, whether that centroid actually has value in a real world application, I’m not sure.

Re: Stop using zip codes for geospatial analysis (2019)

#119

Post by vikingerik »

freyfogle wrote: post #66

There are many problems with zip codes / postal codes but the biggest two we see are: a. Excel treats them as numbers instead of strings of digits and thus drops the leading 0 b. Developers make assumptions about postal codes based on how they work (or more usually how the developer incorrectly thinks they work) in their own country and these assumptions absolutely do NOT hold in other countries. A relevant guide to…

The post office has adapted in turn to that Excel problem. They know it happens. If a parcel has only four digits for the zip code, they'll treat it as a leading zero for routing and delivery.

Re: Stop using zip codes for geospatial analysis (2019)

#120

Post by rascul »

toast0 wrote: post #87
steezeburger wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like the person doesn't know the receiver's zip code. Why are you extending that to not knowing their own zip code? Are they mailing something to themselves?

People often give out their mailing address, and may be misinformed about their zip code. If you get close enough, it usually gets handled in the local sort, but not always. On cities, the mailing address city really is the name of the post office that handles your delivery route. Often there's a relationship with the city you live in, but there's cases both ways --- I used to live outside city limits, we had a censu…

> On cities, the mailing address city really is the name of the post office that handles your delivery route.

Bigger cities can have multiple post offices and zip codes with the same mail address city.

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