How to choose a lat-long among conflicting sources

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Suppose you use various geocoding facilities (like Mapquest's API, Texas A&M's, etc.) to get a latitude-longitude pair for a given address in the United States. They give you differing answers, sometimes miles apart from one another. How should you choose among them?

Well, I suppose you can inspect the various answers on Google Maps or similar and see which makes the most sense. But now suppose you're doing this for a large dataset, where it is very impractical to inspect all the answers; you want an automated way to do it. What should you do?

I will gladly accept answers of any of the following forms:

• a way to choose among the answers obtained
  • which might simply be a single authoritative data source to believe even if others disagree
• a way to find some sort of mean value among the answers obtained
• other

But an explanation would seem to be necessary. (That is, "I do such-and-such" without explaining why is a very weak answer. On the other hand, "the majority of serious GIS folks do such-and-such" is a great answer even without a reason, if it backs up its claim about what the majority does.)

I'm a tyro when it comes to GIS, so I would appreciate answers in laymen's terms.



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