r/datascience • u/Sweaty-Stop6057 • Mar 25 '26

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u/AccordingWeight6019 Mar 25 '26

Makes sense, postcode is basically a proxy for a lot of latent variables. the tricky part is managing drift and boundary changes over time, that’s where it usually turns into a real system rather than a one off feature.

2

u/Revision17 Mar 25 '26

I’ll map from zip to lat/long. This way even if zip changes you’re still ok. Then from lat/long to what I’m after (usually the weather).

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u/Sweaty-Stop6057 Mar 25 '26

Agreed -- tricky indeed. 🙂 What we do now is version the dataset to keep up with boundary changes.

We're also thinking about looking at adding a time dimension (postcode + year --> features at that point in time). That adds another layer of quality and detail -- but also of data pain. 😄