Very different use case -- ZIPs/ZCTAs have some semblance of population normalization

If you care about that and have a data source, you can add, for example, population density per H3 cell as part of your analysis. That has the additional benefit of denoting the this quantity of interest explicitly, rather than some implicitly assumed correlation which may not be true.

Hey AJ, this is almost on topic, do you know of a more up to date version of the dataset you used on the blog post release for H3 v4.0.0 [1]? They stopped updating in Oct 2023. Thanks! [1] https://data.humdata.org/dataset/kontur-population-dataset

I don't. And maybe I should have emphasized "and have a data source" more, since its doing a lot of the heavy-lifting in my statement :)

Not necessarily true. The population isn't balanced at all between many. Census units are.

Absolutely this. Use other Census areal units if you can and ZCTAs only if you have to.

What H3 do I belong to if my house is split between three different ones, pretty much equally? Any/all of them?

You take a smaller H3 :-) The maximum area of a resolution 15 H3 is 1 square meter, so unlikely to split a house in two.

What is the benefit of H3 over a rectangular grid?