September 20, 2009

Postcoded maps

UK postal codes have always fascinated me, with their rich alphanumeric structure. Now I got the chance to play around with their geography.

Plotting their latitude/longitude (or in this case, my approximation to a map projection in km) produces a nice density map:

UK Postcodes

Zooming in reveals what looks like a self-similar fractal structure:

The Midlands

(at least in areas where geography does not strongly constrain, such as the south Wales valleys). Estimating the postcode density and plotting a cumulative distribution suggests that there is a mix of two power laws, one for rural areas and one for urban areas.

Postcode density powerlaw

I also had some fun making a Voronoi diagram based on the code locations. Here is Oxford:

Oxford Voronoi

Posted by Anders3 at September 20, 2009 12:54 AM
Comments