January 3, 2007
oh canada...
One thing I'll never understand about Canada: Why do you mix letters and numbers in your postal codes? The postal code for Quebec is: J0N 1P0.
Is this l33t speak time? How often does 0 get confused with O?
Why can't you keep it simple with numbers???
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Leedar
roy
Basically, it'll be back whenever NetworkRedux lets us come back (if they do, for some reason I have a feeling they won't)
HK1997
benwebber
Ours allows for about 7 million different codes, of which we use 800 000. The theoretical maximum would be 10^3x26^3, but some letters are skipped because of their similarity to numbers (D, F, I, O*, Q, and U), and some aren't used in various places.
Having more postal codes allows mail to be sorted into very small geographical areas. It's not the same as per-locality. The first three digits designate a wide area (the distribution centre) and the last three designate a very localised one, typically one block. This is probably why Canada Post is so slow.
Postal codes are very interesting to me.
* O is used in one postal code: The North Pole, H0H 0H0. Kids write to Santa and their letters are responded to in the same language they're written. I think the mail actually goes to Ottawa.
roy
I didn't know they didn't use letters that resemble numbers; I guess that makes things more acceptable.
Is there a consistent pattern in numbers vs.letter usage? Will the first character of a postal code always be a letter? Is there any geographical significant to the letters/numbers? That is to say, will Montreal have a closer postal code (mathematically) to Quebec as opposed to Vancouver?
I guess if the point is to have a lot of available postal codes for precision, it makes a lot of sense to use letters in there.
OH THERE'S ALWAYS A REASON, ISN'T THERE CANADA?????????????
(could the 800 000 / 7 000 000 usage indicate some secret plan by canada to take over the world?)
benwebber
Yeah, efficiency was probably the idea, but Canada Post isn’t exactly known for its speediness.
The other 6.2 million are reserved for the USA and Mexico in the event of our conquest.
benwebber
miniangel
Naw, I dunno why it's like that but it's pretty simple. As far as I know all postal codes are letter,number,letter space number,letter,number. It's really not too hard to grasp, you know like the metric system ;p
fandango