Question 16.103
73. The Canadian postal system has assigned each geographic region a six-character code composed of alternating letters (not including D, F, I, O, Q, and U) and digits, such as P7B5E1 and K7L3N6. Discuss the advantages that this scheme has over the five-digit ZIP code used in the United States.
73.
The Canadian scheme detects any transposition error involving adjacent characters. Also, because the Canadian code has 6 characters and there are more than 10 choices for the alphabetic characters, there are many more possible Canadian codes than U.S codes. Hence, the Canadian scheme can target a location more precisely.