Data Quality World Tour

A geek about Greek

Henrik Gabs LiliendahlLeave a comment

This ninth Data Quality World Tour blog post is about Greece, a favorite travel destination of mine and the place of origin of so many terms and thoughts in today’s civilization.

Super senior citizens

Today Greece has a problem with keeping records over citizens. A recent data profiling activity has exposed that over 9,000 Greeks receiving pensions are over 100 years old. It is assumed that relatives has missed reporting the death of these people and therefore are taking care of the continuing stream of euro’s. News link here.

Diverse dimensions

I found those good advices for you, when going to Greece today:

Timeliness: When coming to dinner, arriving 30 minutes late is considered punctual.

Accuracy:  Under no circumstances should you publicly question someone’s statements.

Uniqueness: Meetings are often interrupted. Several people may speak at the same time.

(We all have some Greek in us I guess).

Previous Data Quality World Tour blog posts:

New Eyes on Iceland

Henrik Gabs LiliendahlLeave a comment

This eights Data Quality World Tour blog post is about Iceland.

Patronymics

Rather than using family names, the Icelanders use patronymics. This means that the first Icelandic President Sveinn Björnsson must have been son of Björn and I guess current Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir is the daughter of Sigurð. This must create some havoc for well proven algorithms for finding households. (Add to that that the Prime Minister is in a same-sex marriage).

Volcanoes

In the good old days air traffic wasn’t concerned with the recurring volcanic eruptions on Iceland. Today it seems to be a repeating cause of travel havoc. A bit like poor data quality wasn’t taken seriously in the good old days, but today dirty data creates havoc in business intelligence implementations.  

Previous Data Quality World Tour blog posts:

Notes about the North Pole

Henrik Gabs Liliendahl2 Comments

This is the seventh post in a series of short blog posts focusing on data quality related to different countries around the world. However, today we will be at a place not belonging to any country (so far) and only reachable on foot because it is in the middle of an ocean covered by ice (so far).

Who lives on the North Pole?

Obviously no one – except of course that according to tradition in some Western countries the North Pole is described as the residence of Santa Claus. Actually the Canada Post as assigned the postal code “H0H 0H0” to the North Pole. So it’s a good data quality question if “H0H 0H0” is a valid Canadian postal code.

Also Santa Claus may have several other residences, as the Finnish claims the correct address is “Santa Claus Village, FIN-96930 Arctic Circle, Finland” and in Denmark we believe the correct address of Santa Claus to be “Box 1615, DK-3900 Nuuk, Greenland”.

If you are interested in identity resolution covering multiple countries, there is a discussion going on in the LinkedIn Data Matching Group.

Where is the North Pole?

The latitude is 90° – but there is no longitude. So if you don’t accept null in the longitude attribute of your geocodes you might get a data quality issue when Santa Claus becomes a customer and you believe the Canada Post is the only single version of the truth.

Previous Data Quality World Tour blog posts:

Georgian Geography and History

Henrik Gabs LiliendahlLeave a comment

This is the sixth post in a series of short blog posts focusing on data quality related to different countries around the world. I am not aiming at presenting a single version of the full truth but rather presenting a few random observations that I hope someone living in or with knowledge about the country are able to clarify in a comment.

Georgia

Georgia is the English name for a sovereign state in the South Caucasus where Europe meets Asia. Georgia was a part of the Soviet Union under the English name Georgian SSR from 1922 to 1991. Back in the 4th century BC a unified kingdom of Georgia was established as an early example of an advanced state organization under one king and an aristocratic hierarchy.

Georgia

Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. Back in the 18th century the area was known as the Province of Georgia within the British colonies. Before the arrival of the Europeans some of current Georgia was part of the Cofitachequi paramount chiefdom.

Ambiguous place names and slowly changing dimensions

Like with Georgia there are lots of examples of place names belonging to more than one place on Earth. Besides that location reference data like the Georgia’s have slowly changing dimensions as what area is covered, where in a hierarchy it belongs and what it is called at a certain time.

Previous Data Quality World Tour blog posts:

Japanese Jargon

Henrik Gabs LiliendahlLeave a comment

This is the fifth post in a series of short blog posts focusing on data quality related to different countries around the world. I am not aiming at presenting a single version of the full truth but rather presenting a few random observations that I hope someone living in or with knowledge about the country are able to clarify in a comment.

Home of quality philosophy

Japan is the home and inspiration of quality thinking. Therefore we also have some Japanese words used when talking quality. For example kaizen is used for continuous quality improvement, muda is the waste we should avoid and gemba is the real place where things happens and things could be changed.

Streets with no names

When sending letters to Japan the way of addressing is different from how it is done in most other parts of the world. Street names are seldom used in Japanese postal addresses, but the numbers/names of the blocks between the streets are used.

Would you like Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana or Romaji?

No, this is not a selection from the a la carte menu at a Japanese restaurant but different kind of writing systems to choose from in Japan covering three different kinds of script systems. Kanji is the old symbolic writing system similar to Chinese writing. Hiragana and Katakana are syllabic writing systems while Romaji is transcription of Japanese into Roman alphabetic letters.  

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Finding Finland

Henrik Gabs LiliendahlLeave a comment

This is the fourth post in a series of short blog posts focusing on data quality related to different countries around the world. I am not aiming at presenting a single version of the full truth but rather presenting a few random observations that I hope someone living in or with knowledge about the country are able to clarify in a comment.

Let’s start with Finnish

Finland is situated in the North Eastern corner of Europe. The Finnish language is together with Estonian and Hungarian much longer south in Europe totally different from the neighboring countries languages which are Germanic or Slavic. Swedish is also an official language in Finland, and in some parts of Finland cities and streets have both (usually totally different) Finnish and Swedish names.

Galoshes

The by far largest company in Finland is the cell phone maker Nokia. Before the cell phone was invented Nokia made paper and galoshes – the old way of connecting people. Nokia also from 2006 to 2008 owned the data quality firm Identity Systems. It was sold to Informatica. I guess Identity Systems connected with the Gaelic Tiger firm Similarity Systems make up the data matching capabilities at Informatica.

Syslore

One of the remaining (relatively) larger independent data matching firms in the world is Syslore. Syslore is hiding in Finland.

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Questions about Quebec

Henrik Gabs Liliendahl6 Comments

This is the third post in a series of short blog posts focusing on data quality related to different countries around the world. I am not aiming at presenting a single version of the full truth but rather presenting a few random observations that I hope someone living in or with knowledge about the country are able to clarify in a comment.

Is Quebec a country?

No. Quebec is a province in Canada. But it was close on the 30/10/1995 with a referendum on sovereignty with only a very slim majority against sovereignty for the only province in Canada where French is the only official language.

What’s that date: 30/10/1995?

Besides having a different language Quebec also uses a different date format than else in North America. Where North Americans write month-day-year (like 10/30/1995) Quebecker’s write day-month-year like in most other parts of the world. I learned that from this blog post comment here.

The North American multi-cultural sandbox

A lot of software including tools for data quality and master data management comes from North America. When the international (and none English) capabilities of the software and related stuff are questioned, a good answer is always: Well, we did something in Quebec. Like here.

Previous Data Quality World Tour blog posts:

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Inside India

Henrik Gabs LiliendahlLeave a comment

This is the second post in a series of short blog posts focusing on data quality related to different countries around the world. I am not aiming at presenting a single version of the full truth but rather presenting a few random observations that I hope someone living in or with knowledge about the country are able to clarify in a comment.

Cultural Diversity

India‘s culture is marked by a high degree of syncretism and cultural pluralism. Every state and union territory has its own official languages, and the constitution also recognizes 21 languages.

National Identification Number for 1.2 Billion People

The government of India has initiated a program for assigning a unique citizen ID for the over 1.2 billion people living in India. The program called Aadhaar is the largest of that kind in the world.

A System Integration Superpower

Tata, Satyam, Infosys, Wipro is just some of the many mega system integrators within master data management and data quality with headquarters in India. Add to that that companies like Cognizant and many others have most of their professionals based in India.  

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Check out the Czech Republic

Henrik Gabs LiliendahlLeave a comment

This is the first post in a planned series of short blog posts focusing on data quality related to different countries around the world. I am not aiming at presenting a single version of the full truth but rather presenting a few random observations that I hope someone living in or with knowledge about the country are able to clarify in a comment.

Companies all over

Last time I checked the Czech Republic had the highest number of Duns Numbers (unique company ID’s in the Dun & Bradstreet WorldBase) per capita in the world. Wonder if this is because of a very effective public sector registration, some special rules for incorporation or is it duplicates?

Exonyms, endonyms and beers

Many Czeck cities are known by the English exonyms (the name in English) but of course have a local endonym (name in Czech). The capital Prague is Praha in Czech. The town Pilsen is called Plzeň in Czech, but there are several towns around the world called Pilsen – and then of course there is a sort of beer called pilsener. (České) Budějovice is Czech for Budweis in German and English. We are certainly talking beer here also.

Ataccama

The data quality and master data management firm Ataccama was founded in the Czech Republic.

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