Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2018 June 6

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June 6

Pew Research Center research and surveys

How does the Pew Research Center do research and conduct surveys? How do they get facts and statistics if they are not a government agency but a private, non-profit organization? WJetChao (talk) 07:21, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Most Western democracies publish their facts and figures; in the UK, the Office for National Statistics is "charged with the collection and publication of statistics related to the economy, population and society of the UK". Alansplodge (talk) 12:10, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

WJetChao Each Pew Research Center report has a detailed survey methodology section. The report PDFs have the details. For instance, see the Web page on the 2017 report, The Changing Global Religious Landscape. On the right is the PDF labeled Appendix C: Full Methodology, Appendix D: Data Sources by Country, Appendix E: Defining Religious Groups, and Appendix F: Topline, all summarized (Appendix B: Methodology), but not included in the Complete Report (with Appendixes A and B). -- Paulscrawl (talk) 15:54, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

City boundary in the US

When I Google Map Sequim, WA, I get this map[1], where presumably the red part outlines the boundary of the city. The red outline almost exactly agrees with this official county zoning map[2], so presumably Google Maps is correct here.

But when I Google Map a location outside those city limits, let's say "Robin Hill Farm County Park", 5 km to the west of Sequim, I get this[3], where its address is given as "141 Dryke Rd, Sequim, WA 98382, USA".

What's going on here? Is "Robin Hill Farm County Park" in Sequim or not? Or are places outside city limits still associated with the city somehow?

Apologies if this is a dumb question. I've always lived in cities so I'm unfamiliar with how these urban-rural boundaries work. Mũeller (talk) 10:45, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

We had a similar question recently regarding the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC [4]. In short, postal addresses refer to the location of the post office in charge of distributing the mail to a particular location, and it can often be located in another city. This is most often the case for addresses in unincorporated areas. --Xuxl (talk) 12:41, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Further, the postal city is not always 1:1 with what you expect. For example: The Pentagon has a mailing address of Washington DC 22202, despite clearly being in Virginia; addresses in New York City use "New York" as the city in Manhattan, the borough name for the Bronx, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the neighborhood name for Queens - so Queens has a ton more "cities" in it than any other part of NYC. And if you go to the USPS lookup tool and punch in 98382, it includes the "city names to avoid" which are other CDPs in the area that someone might reasonably put as the city name but shouldn't, because a ZIP::City arrangement is supposed to be 1:1; there are still exceptions, though, as seen by the 'other city names recognized' section. --Golbez (talk) 16:06, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Let me emphasize what Xuxl says, about the postal-city being the place where the post office is located. One might think "well, the Pentagon's different because it's a government building with its own post office", and that's true, but this kind of situation can happen in ordinary state-line situations. For example, see Kaskaskia, the first capital of Illinois. Due to the movement of the Mississippi River, Kaskaskia's more easily accessed from Missouri (see File:Old Mississippi riverbed at St. Mary.jpg and File:Old Mississippi riverbed near St. Mary's.jpg), so its residents have addresses ending with "St. Mary, MO 63673". Border towns may have the same zip code, although with the normal state name; people in Union City have addresses ending in "Union City, IN 45390" or "Union City, OH 45390", for example, although this is easy because both places have the same name. But this doesn't always happen; residents of College Corner, Ohio have their own post office, 45003, while residents of West College Corner, Indiana have their own post office too, 47003. (The line-straddling elementary school has an Ohio address, so you could say that the Indiana part has an out-of-state address.) And a similar situation is true of West Harrison, Indiana, which is much tinier than Harrison, Ohio, but has its own post office. Nyttend (talk) 02:11, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Furthermore, some unincorporated areas can have a post office without a city at all; Swannanoa, North Carolina, Springfield, Virginia, and Bear, Delaware all have post offices, but there is no municipal government at all; they are unincorporated places that only have county and state government. --Jayron32 02:15, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Take it one further — at least those are all "normal" population centers. I doubt it's common in most of the country, but here in Virginia, with comparatively few population centers and a large proportion of people living out in the countryside, one can sometimes find post offices out in the middle of nowhere. Merry Point, for example, is just the post office; it has a few houses, but at no greater density than the surrounding area. Sometimes you'll have a little extra, e.g. the country store and the vet's office near the Keene post office, or a couple of churches at Clifford, but this is not necessarily to be expected. Nyttend (talk) 23:49, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

It happens elsewhere too. Willow Spring, North Carolina is a post office located at a convenient crossroads, but there's nothing there that stands out as a population center. --Jayron32 00:58, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

It can happen both ways: I once lived in a corner of Pasadena that was postally in (unincorporated) Altadena. —Tamfang (talk) 06:19, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

In the US, many residents who live in a township or other unincorporated area outside of (but near) a city or village, still have their mail addressed to a post office in their nearest city or village. Most maps will not show this relationship.--Thomprod (talk) 13:40, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Mũeller, since you spoke of Google Maps, try typing in a five-digit number. You'll be given a map that (allegedly) shows the boundaries of the zip code with that number, if there is one. When I supply my parents' code, it correctly shows the code area extending far away from their town in a couple of directions and stopping very nearby in another. When I supply mine, it shows the boundaries following major roads to random locations; I don't know if this is true, but it makes sense, since the zip codes are based on convenient delivery routes and not arbitrary "what's closest to this post office". Nyttend (talk) 23:57, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you very much, everyone! Mũeller (talk) 01:06, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

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