Why doesn Map Center mark the right house on the Air Photo when it finds my address?
Map Center uses a strategy called geocoding to take a written address (like 1025 2nd Ave) and locate it on a map. Geocoding usually does find the right block for your address, but it usually does not find the exact location along the block when marking your address. Here’s why: Map Center knows the starting and ending addresses on each side of every street block in Oakland, but doesn’t know exactly where each house is along the block. So, when Map Center marks your address along the block, it uses interpolation. With interpolation, Map Center divides up the street evenly between the starting and ending addresses and marks your address at the right division point. For instance, on an imaginary street with only three addresses (#1, #2, and #3), Map Center would divide up the street into three points. If your address was #2, Map Center would place the mark for #2 in the middle of the block, even though the house with address #2 isn’t exactly in the middle of the block. Because most houses
