[Talk-us] Postal Code Extract (zip vs zcta)

[Richard Welty]

On 9/4/13 7:16 AM, dies38061 at mypacks.net wrote:
> >From the page which Bryce referred to in http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/2013-September/011738.html comes the following passage:
>
> "The term ZCTA was created to differentiate between this entity and true USPS ZIP Codes.
> ZCTA is a trademark of the U.S. Census Bureau; ZIP Code is a trademark of the U.S. Postal Service."
>
> Therefore, ZCTA information _approximates_ ZIP information for census purposes.  If you want to map/use ZIP code information, don't use the ZCTA information to do it, I would infer.--ceyockey
>
any area-oriented representation of zip data will be an approximation.
it's the nature of the beast.

richard