Data are spotty; definitions vary.
Sussing out the cause of the spike in reported crimes is even more difficult, because the crimes are notoriously underreported, experts say, and the data are spotty, at best.
Though data are spotty for this year, the number of such incidents is on track to approach 100 million.
But as with many uncommon illnesses, particularly those involving pregnancy, the data available is spotty.
So if you live in a part of the country where AT&T's 3G data network is spotty, you can now supplement that coverage with AT&T's WiFi network.
While the data to prove it is spotty and unavailable in many places, new data on the nation's capital appears to show some alarming results underscoring that claim.
Unfortunately, VAERS data is notoriously spotty – better than nothing, but there's no way to insure that potential side effects are reported.
Plus, he sees room for lots more data — while Foursquare has data about 105 million points of interest and Google has 100 million, Meech estimates that there are more than 1 billion POIs across the world, many of them in developing nations where the data is more spotty.
While complete data on compensation packages is spotty, you can get a picture of directors' vested interest through their shareholdings.
The primary reason this accounting is tricky is spotty data: Satellite measures of ocean height only go back to 1993, for example, and of the world's more than 100,000 glaciers, there are only 17 with melt records going back 30 years or more.
The mobile landscape in Africa is spread unevenly across 56 countries: in some places there is good infrastructure and access to mobile data, in others access is spotty and limited to basic services.
