You know, statistics can be funny things. One company says they have x thousand neighborhoods. Another says y. One says they cover n cities, another says m. Any company can overwhelm you with statistics. Maponics is happy to provide statistics like these, but how should you interpret them and which questions and numbers are really valuable? We encourage you to ask us and other companies the following additional questions when considering a company that says it offers neighborhood boundaries:
- How many US neighborhoods do they have?
- Do they know the three official ways to define a city, or are they making up their definition?
- Do they have clear boundaries or do they force you to use overlapping data?
- How much (%) of the population do they cover? (And how do you know they aren't double counting population if they have overlapping neighborhoods?)
- Do they provide you with the raw data (shapefiles or ascii) or do they require you go through their API (so they can limit what you do with the data)?
- How many new cities did they add in the most recent quarter? Push for specifics - if they can't give you an exact list, along with when they were added, then how do you know they truly did add cities?
- What are the cities they are working on this quarter? If they won't tell you, is it because they really don't have a plan?
- Do they overplay the card of "we have lots of demographic and statistical data"?
Relating statistics to neighborhoods is relatively easy once you have accurate boundaries - are they spending more energy on their stats than on creating high quality boundaries?
- And what about quality? Quantity doesn't always correlate to quality.
Just ask for a sample of their data - the raw data - for a city you know and test their quality. Though keep in mind that neighborhoods, by definition, are somewhat inexact entities.
- Do they offer a 100% money back guarantee?
- Thinking of using “free” neighborhood data? Call us at 800-762-5158 for our white paper.
Creating and managing spatial datasets can't be a side business. If the company's core focus isn't mapping and mapping data creation, then why are they in the business of licensing data? Do they actually use their own data? If they don't offer a wide array of mapping/spatial data and services, then you might question their overall capability and/or focus on mapping.
Maponics is happy to provide you with the answers to all of the above questions and any others you may have. Call us at 1-800-762-5158.
Learn more about neighborhood data in general or neighborhood boundaries, and why you should choose Maponics for this data.
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Maponics vs. the Competition, and the Myth of Statistics
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