Reference for 80% of Data Contains Geography Quote
education, spatial data August 31st, 2009We’ve all heard and repeated the quote that 80% of all data contains some reference to geography. It’s one of those easy to remember, and quite believable statistics that has been passed down since the early 1990s. I’ve often wondered where that quote came from, have asked several people in the past, and get asked the question myself. I received a reference for the quote from Beniamino Murgante, lecturer of Spatial Analysis and Planning at the Universit of Basilicata and editor of Geocomputation and Urban Planning, a volume from Springer Verlag.
The reference is: Franklin, Carl and Paula Hane, “An introduction to GIS: linking maps to databases,” Database. 15 (2) April, 1992, 17-22.
The periodical Database was published from 1978 through 1999 as, “the magazine of database reference and review.” I haven’t had a chance to get to a library yet to view the full article, but here’s the abstract:
Discusses the impact of computerization of maps on access to business and government information that may be geographically referenced and the emergence of a new field, Geographic Information Management (GIM). Applications of hypertext/hypermedia in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are described, and software available for workstations and microcomputers are reviewed.
If anyone has a copy of the magazine or access to the online archive via your education account, I’d love to see the full quote in context.
Posts
August 31st, 2009 at 12:58 pm
UPDATE: I just received a copy of the original from Steve Romalewski, and turns out the quote references a 1990 report from the Ohio Geographically Referenced Information Program (OGRIP) [http://ogrip.oit.ohio.gov]. I’m busy tracking that down, and will report my findings.
September 3rd, 2009 at 8:31 am
While I can’t help with the original article, I recently saw a different version of this quote, which is that “80% of all data stored in corporate databases has a spatial component”. This sounds more likely, but less exciting somehow. Do report back if you find the original article, which is now nearly 20 years out of date- it would be really interesting to see how they reached that figure, and what the modern figure would be…
November 10th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Hi, this may be yesterday’s news, but have you found the source of that interesting quote? Cheers, Andrew
December 6th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
In searching for this quote on the OGRIP site, I was only able to find reference in a draft for a white paper written in 2004. It can be found at http://ogrip.oit.ohio.gov/Portals/0/PDFs/LBRS%20Program%20Description_v3.0.pdf (their version of the statistic is “80% of data collected, stored, and maintained by local governments includes some reference to geography”). I am unsure as to how they came across this data, but I am beginning to wonder if this falls into the “90% of statistics are made up” category. If not, I would be really interested in seeing the study they conducted to gain this information.
February 22nd, 2010 at 4:40 pm
[...] 22 February, 2010 A question from Jeremy Morley ‘An often quoted figure estimates that 80% of information contains some geographic reference.’ – anyone got the source reference for this?! led me to search for an answer. This is indeed often quoted in governmental documents, academic papers and trade magazines. [...]