I Guess 80% of Data Has a Location Component

Four months ago I made a big deal about the 80% of data is spatial” myth.

Now it could be that the stat is true. I’m horrible at darts, but sometimes I do get a bullseye so maybe we all nailed it with this one. But until someone can actually back this stat up with real facts, I’m calling bullshit and you should too. Stop throwing it into your PowerPoint slide decks and executive summaries.

Generally it was attributed to a couple people, but nothing substantial. I mean putting it in your PowerPoint slide deck hurts no one, right?

Well linked off the front page of Esri is their Location Analytics page describing whatever that is and right in the middle is:

80percentofData80percentofData

Well there you go, it must be true because I can’t imagine Esri using that quote without research. I wish they’d put a description at the bottom to see where that came from, I really want to know.

My own feeling is that the quote should go like this:

100% of data has a spatial component you haters

Feel free to reference this page for your presentations.


Tags
Thoughts

Date
January 4, 2013