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Zip codes and other lies your map told you

Peter Lenz Peter Lenz | Vice President of Data Science | Near

Your spatial data might be lying to you. Zip code is the most common piece of geo-data analysts and data scientists see, but it has many quirks that can derail your analysis and lead to false conclusions. We'll look at the zip code and learn exactly what it is - and what it isn't. To do this we'll take a look at how a piece of mail get from point A to point B and take very quick trip though the history of the U.S. postal system before looking at other data you can collect that may be more appropriate for spatial purposes than zip code. Then we'll turn our attention to other ways seemingly good spatial data can lie to you: trap streets and paper towns.

Peter Lenz
Peter Lenz
Vice President of Data Science | Near

I'm Peter (he, him), a Geographer and Data Scientist based in New York City. I combine a deep domain expertise in geoinformatics and economic geography with technical skills in programming, machine learning, NLP, among others. I'm working to create 'Big Social Science'.

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