Privacy and the Census

Every representative democracy has a fundamental need to undertake a regular enumeration of its citizens to ensure that equal representation can be maintained as best as possible. But once you have gone to considerable trouble to count the people, it is quite...

Peering over the Border

Over the years, despite my attempts to assimilate into the American melting pot, the pronunciation of certain words betrays my heritage. No one whose first language is Canadian can say the word “out” without evoking a barely concealed snicker from most Americans. Eh?...

Data Marketplaces and Exchanges

This week, AGS released its 2021A datasets. Just two decades ago, most demographics users did so by using a Windows based application which usually used a GIS platform and often proprietary data formats and stored everything on the small local hard drive. The end user...

25 Years of AGS- Gary’s Perspective

Like many companies, Applied Geographic Solutions was born of a combination of necessity and entrepreneurial drive. The necessity came about because the company I worked for at the time – Urban Decision Systems – was sold at the end of 1995. The preferred buyer was...

Dashboards, Surrogates and Wonky Gauges

If I were to ask people what their car dashboard gauge labelled “Speed” measures, all but that annoying engineer with the pocket protector would say, duh, the speed of the car. Obviously. But they would be wrong. The speedometer measures the rotation speed of the...