We issued a correction to our ZIP code lookup tool: Suburban Cook County was misidentified as all of Cook County. Thanks to long-time Chicago civic data nerd @joshkalov for catching it! https://www.chicagoreporter.com/how-is-covid-19-affecting-your-zip-code-in-illinois/">https://www.chicagoreporter.com/how-is-co...

While it& #39;s never fun to make a mistake, there are over 1,000 ZIP codes, 103 counties, and the data from the state doesn& #39;t line up perfectly with any of them. We simply won& #39;t catch everything, and the state& #39;s data can be volatile and unpredictable on a day-to-day basis.

We account for this properly in all our prior graphics, but I had an uncaught bug in my code to handle it for the ZIP code lookup when I generated our geographic data.

That& #39;s why working in the open and getting feedback like this is so helpful. My *first story* at NPR I had to issue a similar relatively minor correction, and oddly enough explaining the correction and how @ryanpitts saw the mistake in our code was more popular than 1st promo.