diagram from http://www.unaids.org/sites/default/files/sub_landing/files/10_4-Intro-to-triangulation-MEF_0.pdf From Known to Unknown Perhaps you think of geometry when you hear the word triangulation, because "triangulation is the process of determining the location of a point by forming triangles to the point from known points".   [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangulation ].  Data Triangulation Data scientists use the triangulation to describe using data from multiple unrelated sources in a single study, adding reliability to the findings. Is this beginning to sound familiar? We are often urged to search for multiple sources in order to reliably report precise dates, places and relationships in our research. Even within a data source such as a family Bible record of births, deaths, and marriages, if it is evident that one person noted most of the data on a page, it is less reliable than if the data was evidently recorded by many people close to the time of the events...