Who's Reading in October

I see Madison is back in the top spot.  I like Google Analytics but I wish there was an easier way to share.  I mean you can export it to a PDF which is nice, but it would really be cool to have a widget on Blogger that shows this stuff on an interactive map.  Yes, I am a nerd so I like numbers and charts and statistics. 

Rank	City	Visits
1	Madison	715
2	Milwaukee	623
3	La Crosse	510
4	St Louis, MO	266
5	Chicago, IL	180
6	Winona, MN	151
7	Washington, DC	149
8	Elm Grove	136
9	New York, NY	131
10	St Paul, MN	128
11	Appleton	124
12	Green Bay	101

Since I am in a geeky mood, a story for you.  A while back my car broke down in Baraboo after a camping trip with some friends at Devils Lake(involving Latin Masses and drinking beer... at different times).  I got a ride back to La Crosse but I left the car and had it towed to get repaired.  Later that week after it was repaired I got a ride back to Baraboo and so I looked up on Google Maps where the address to the shop was located.  It showed the location downtown Baraboo.  We showed up, and no repair shop to be seen.  We asked somebody and we were told to head back toward the insterstate.  The actual location was something like 5 or 6 miles from Baraboo up the old Hwy 12.

Centroids, gotta love em!

So how did Google Maps get it wrong?  Well let me tell you a little something about geo assignment.  There are two levels of geo assignment when you give an address, centroid level and address(or rooftop) level.  If you do data processing you sometimes don't need and actual address level assignment, just a general idea of the location.  A centroid is a geometric shape fit on the map, which could be a square but almost always is some awkward shape.  It usually represent part of a zip code(and actually could be assigned with just the 9 digit zip code).  When the assignment is made at the centroid level, it will put the pointer on the map to the mathematical middle of that shape.  So what Google does is it tries to assign to the address level, if not, hey, it will get you "close" ... by, oh I don't know, 10 miles or so?  I would expect it to tell you it can't make the address level assignment but that might not look so good to someone who thinks Google is right about everything.  So now next time you are Google mapping something, and later that evening you you find yourself conveniently in the middle of a corn field instead of meeting up with your future traddy spouse at a new Wisconsin brewpub, you know why.