If you ask me the question ”How many people live in your town?” I could give you a correct answer being 5,000 % besides what you are looking for.
I live in Greve Municipality in Denmark. Population close to 48,000. Greve is a suburb south of Copenhagen. According to Wikipedia Copenhagen urban area has a population of 1.2 million and Copenhagen metro area has a population of 1.9 million people.
The Copenhagen metro area stretches from 40 km (20 miles) south of the city to 40 km (20 miles) north at Elsinore and Kronborg Castle (immortalized in Shakespeare’s Hamlet – always remember to include Shakespeare in a blog).
Further more: From Copenhagen you can look across the water to the east seeing Sweden and the city Malmoe. The Copenhagen-Malmoe bi-national urban agglomeration has a total population of 2.5 million people.
The real data quality issue in my initial question is not the precision, validity and timeliness in the number given in the answer but the shared understanding of the label attached to the number.
I noticed that Wikipedia has developed a good metadata habit when stating town populations giving 3 distinct labels: City, Urban and Metro.
Liliendahl on Data Quality 
Nice post Henrik,
First, congratulations on remembering to always include Shakespeare in a blog. 🙂
I definitely agree it is the shared understanding of the label attached to many business metrics that is the real data quality issue.
I have seen this being the underlying cause of the confusion and contention surrounding the (often conflicting) answers to common business questions, such as:
– How many customers do we have?
– How many products did we sell?
– How much revenue did we generate?
And the list goes on and on…
To paraphrase King Claudius:
“Labels attached to great numbers must not unwatched go.”
Best Regards,
Jim
Thanks for the comment Jim. Yet another great paraphrasing.
Similar situation here in St. Louis, MO.
St. Louis City: 350,000
St. Louis Metro: 2,800,000
Early in its history, someone decided that there would be a fixed geographic boundary to the “city” of St. Louis. Now, the vast majority of the metro area is actually located outside that boundary and into two separate states (Missouri and Illinois).
So, St. Louis City is not actually a very populous place. The metro region which includes more than a hundred independent municipalities, though, is among the top 20 in the U.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis,_Missouri
Paul, thanks for the comment. I guess it is with state and nation borders like with organisational divisions in an enterprise that the historical reasons often counts more than current circumstances.