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Vol. I · No. 251
Mon · 8 Jun
A Daily Lexicon of Trustworthy Data
The Lexicon

005·76

default value pollution

/dɪˈfɔːlt ˈvæl.juː pəˈluː.ʃən/ - n.

1 [colloq.] The reason a company believes a meaningful share of its customers were born on the first of January, 1900.Keep. Punchy.This is the problem.

Working definition

2. The degradation of accuracy that occurs when placeholder or default entries — 01/01/1900, 99999, 'N/A' — accumulate and are later treated as real values.

Evidence
See also
  • accuracyAgreement with the source system, which everyone has quietly agreed to call reality.
  • completenessThe percentage of fields that are populated, of which a smaller, unmeasured percentage is populated correctly.
  • data cleansingRepairing the data instead of the system that keeps breaking it, monthly, in perpetuity.