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One of my favorites on this topic is US ZIP codes. Most people tend to think that ZIP codes are contiguous geographic subdivisions. Most people also tend to thi
by greggyb 4y ago
One of my favorites on this topic is US ZIP codes. Most people tend to think that ZIP codes are contiguous geographic subdivisions. Most people also tend to think of a ZIP code as a contained part of some administrative boundary.
To grossly oversimplify, ZIP codes are essentially mail delivery routes. They are paths, not borders.
My ZIP code is serviced by the post office of a neighboring town. Almost every single online service I interact with that needs my address refuses to accept my actual town in my address, but instead replaces it, based on the ZIP code, with the neighboring town. The same is true for most GPS navigation.
- arethuza 4y agoCan ZIP codes change? I found out on a project a few years back that the postcodes of UK properties can change.
- freyfogle 4y agoyou may enjoy: https://opencagedata.com/guides/how-to-think-about-postcodes-and-geocoding https://opencagedata.com/guides/how-to-think-about-postcodes...
- eesmith 4y agoYes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIP_Code#Division_and_reallocation_of_ZIP_Codes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIP_Code#Division_and_realloca...
- HelloNurse 4y agoItalian fiscal codes are usually mishandled in a similar way: rare unfortunate citizens have the same computed code as each other (close name and surname, same sex, same birth day and same birth place), the government issues them special numeric codes, but clever websites insist on computing the code from personal information and rejecting numerical codes.
- jcrawfordor 4y agoAccording to USPS, every ZIP code has a "recommended" or primary city name. This is typically the city of the post office that serves the zone. USPS address validation tools will always replace the city name on an address with the recommended city name for that ZIP code. However, USPS also maintains in their addressing database a list of "recognized" or secondary city names for a ZIP code. For ZIP codes that span multiple towns this list can be fairly long. As far as USPS is concerned these city names are not "recommended" but nonetheless interchangeable, so you can e.g. write the name of your town on mail to the nearby town containing the post office. It's also common for the "recognized" list to include special cases like "Campus" if there's a university or sometimes names of large corporate facilities. This is all just to solidify the point that, as far as USPS is concerned, ZIP codes are the organizational unit on which mail is routed and town names are only for human convenience. Ultimately this convention extends to each house since the 11-digit ZIP+4+DP (included in the IMB barcode) should uniquely identify a physical location at which mail is delivered.
- JJMcJ 4y agoWhoa, whoa, you mean the programmers are supposed to look things up instead of the first idea that pops into their head about how things work. I'm as guilty as everyone else about this.
- greggyb 4y agoI believe, but do not know how or where to find a conclusive answer, that the minimum amount of information[0] required to deliver a piece of US mail is street, number, and ZIP. The rest of the information forms a rudimentary logical checksum. The state name, 'California' can easily disambiguate a leading numeral that looks as if it could be a 0 or a 9, as a leading-zero-ZIP would be in the East. [0] Specifically, the address information that the sender typically writes on the front of an envelope. As you noted, the information in the IMB barcode is also sufficient information.
- JJMcJ 4y agoSome destinations don't have street numbers or even a street. Example from some time ago: United Nations New York, New York was sufficient. Or Macy's Herald Square New York, New York These days with the volume of mail and high automation, there's a good chance this will come back or take forever to get delivered. So don't try this at home, kids.
- JJMcJ 4y agoCompanies that handle online sales either buy or have someone whose duties include figuring out how sales tax matches address. Here in California many areas have sales tax surcharges and the ZIP may not conform to the boundaries. For mail delivery, the name of the post office is appropriate. For other things it may not be. Constant problem for school districts, for example. Also one author noted that the USPS uses "ZIP" code but the O'Reilly style book has "Zip" code.
- gumby 4y ago“ZIP” is an acronym for Zone Improvement Plan so unsurprisingly the USPS is correct in this usage.
- JJMcJ 4y agoSame way someone always knows how to correctly pronounce their name, even if you think it's wrong or it's not how the country of origin pronounces the name. Off topic for this posting but FORTRAN became Fortran around 1990, but it's still COBOL.
- gumby 4y agoAnd there's the horrible neologism "internet" as a noun -- ugh! Even blessed by some style guides.
- JJMcJ 4y agoYou mean instead of the Internet? It's a matter of some controversy but the public Internet that I'm using to reply probably should be capitalized. Discussion of the issue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet#Terminology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet#Terminology including usage before computer networking. In particular the article mentions This reflects the tendency in English to capitalize new terms and move to lowercase as they become familiar.
- dragonwriter 4y agoI mean, if you prefer all-caps for acronyms (some style guides prefer all-caps for initialisms that are not acronyms, and initial-cap for acronyms.)
- kylebarron 4y ago> They are paths, not borders They're not even paths! They're just collections of points with no meanings between points. E.g. a GeoJSON "MultiPoint"
- izacus 4y agoI mean, I'd just love for US sites to stop assuming that ZIP codes need 5 numbers. It still happens way to much that an internationally shipping website form refuses to accept my address just because it has a 4-number post code. (Luckily the local post office tolerates adding a 9 in front and still delivers.)
- JJMcJ 4y agoNot to mention countries without post codes at all.
- greggyb 4y agoZIP codes do need five numbers, or nine with a hyphen between the first five and last four. If your address is not in the US, you do not have a ZIP code. A ZIP code is type of postal code. There are many more postal code varieties than ZIPs. Companies that ship internationally should not use validation rules for US addresses for non-US addresses.
- dragonwriter 4y ago> ZIP codes do need five numbers, or nine with a hyphen between the first five and last four. ZIP codes have actually been 11 digits for a while now, though you can obviously still use just 5 or 9 and the USPS will figure the rest out.
- dragonwriter 4y ago> I’d just love for US sites to stop assuming that ZIP codes need 5 numbers. I know. ZIP codes need 9 numbers. No, wait, that’s 11 for the last 31 years.
- chaircher 4y agoThere's a lot of problems like this in the UK along the England/Wales border. Postcodes only roughly correlate to other administrative sub-divisions but this nuance gets lost in some computer systems and there are massive administrative differences across the Wales/England border, including student finance rules, access to healthcase and so on.
- freyfogle 4y agoGrew up in zip code 09180. Have fun with that.