Slashdot Mirror
Web Game Helps Predict Spread of Epidemics
An anonymous reader writes "Using data from the web game wheresgeorge.com, which traces the travels of dollar bills, scientists have unveiled statistical laws of human travel and developed a mathematical description that can be used to model the spread of infectious disease."
If you try to login or register at Where Is George you get a message that they're taking it down temporarily because of heavy user load...
Too bad, imagine the influx of data if they got everyone who reads slashdot to participate.
The only dollar bill I remember possessing with the "Where's George" stamp on it came from a man working at a pizza shop with gigantic cold sores.
This article is really light on details, but the concept sounds strikingly like something that would be predictable through Seldon's psychohistory. Was Asimov right in his premise? Are human beings nothing more than complicated animals working through complex, predictable behavior? I wonder how much of what we do on a daily basis is a result of free will when I hear about science like this. Am I just a statistic? Governments would love equations that predict human behavior on a macroscopic scale.
Webmaster Wanted - Entropic Reactions
now i'm gonna sanitize all my money, and i'm kinda concerned about things i buy from overseas. The bird flu is pretty nasty!
Just a few comments and their server is down already.
I wanted to find out where my $5 bill was too!
I was under the impression that Wheregeorge was a study of currency circulation not a webgame.
and today's blog title somewhere, I'm sure: Where's George Spreads Epidemic.
Where's George? is currently experiencing very heavy user load.
... more like the slashdot effect.
This is most likely due to the upcoming article in "Nature" Magazine on how the
Max Planck Institute used our data to help predict epidemic spread of human diseases.
To a nail, every person with a hammer looks like a problem.
Here is the blurb in Nature, Nature's Editor's Summary
and here is the PDF research paper The scaling laws of human travel.
These guys (wheresgeorge) have a pretty ingenious business model... They sell stamps which allow you to mark bills thus greatly increasing the chances that somebody else will enter it into the system.
Ñ'
I remember coming across this site several years ago (2001? 2002?) and just for fun entered a couple bills to see how it worked. Since then, I totally forgot about it until this Slashdot reminded me! I'm very curious to find out how 'my' bills are doing these days. I do remember, however, reading somewhere that the average lifespan of a one dollar bill is less than a year or two, so the chances my bills made it past the few months I handled them may be slim.
Zombie Infection Simulation Machine!
Brians! Must eat brains!
Software Wars
I wrote the url to Where's George on a dollar bill and use it in a convient store. I live in West Texas, the dollar bill was in Georgia in a week.
How long until people start trying to think up ways of using bank-notes to deliver deadly chemical or biological agents to the mass population? They've already discovered "radioactive banknotes in Kazakhstan".
Get your own free personal location tracker
Urban Dead gets no love? That webgame is truly infectious -- what with its "243,575 dead and rising" :)
Power to the Peaceful
Similarly, I was going to mention that, if/when credit completely replaces money it will probably be safer to use, hygienically. That's pretty much irrelevant now, but I'm still saying it because I feel that it's important.
In Oregon and New Jersey, self service gas pumps are illegal. I've always wondered whether that helps reduce disease vectors -- I mean, people fueling up are possibly travelling on the roadway from a long ways away. I'd imagine that gas pump handles are pretty darn unsanitary.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
And who's to say that even 10% of the data on that site is legit? No drunken people entering fake data? No webmasters adding long travel stories, to make the site more interesting?
Bah!
A model based upon unreliable / unproven data...
Where is George ? Where Oil is.
It's not nearly as infective as GetAIDs... A web game you can actually get AIDs from! What will they think of next?
Uhm.... don't diseases tend to go in the opposite direction that money does? Like aren't the poorest places in the world also the places with the most diseases.
A rabbit in the hand is worth 4 in the cage
Wow, what a bunch of crap science. They're trying to track movement of people by where dollar bills show up?! WTF? When you buy something at a store that bill might go back into circulation immediately but its just as likely to be deposited in a bank. From what I understand, banks send cash to regional counting facilities. From there it is redistributed. It's impossible to track this movement. A bill deposited in San Francisco could easily turn up in LA, Portland, or Seattle without it being transported there by an individual traveler. What if a person in Seattle then gets that bill from the bank, hops a plane to New York, but doesn't enter it's information into that website and then spends the money in New York where it isn't recorded and then through a similar process the bill ends up in Kansas City? IF someone in Kansas City knows about the site and gives a rats ass about it and actually enters the bills serial number it now looks like someone in San Franciso travelled to Kansas City. How does this help understand the movement habits of humans? Like I said, this is crap science and does absolutely nothing to further our understanding of how diseases spread.
Kevin Bacon.
Or Waldo.
But if you go to the wrong URL, it will be corrected automatically.
And it was only temporarily down.. it's back up now.
>> No, let's play Infectious Disease Modeling.
> Fine.
[]
Transfers of money are indicative of the movement of people (though obviously not a 1-1 correlation). Finding patterns of money's travel will also show patterns of possible disease spread, as those moving the money are possible vectors of contagion.
Diseases SUCCEED in poor places because the lack of nutrition/clean water/medicine/education/rape-prevention etc. A new (or significantly different variation of a current) disease, however, that is transfered by, say, touch or close proximity (airborn transmission with a short life outside the host's body, for instance) would not be nearly as ghetto-ized as our current treatable-but-not-treated-in-poor-places diseases.
This won't be perfect, obviously, but statistics and Where's George are a match made in heaven.
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
...Captain Trips?
I spend a significant amount of time EVERY DAY to ferret out fake data. I have several automated processes that search for and remove any data that does not fit certain criteria. I take this site, and the data integrity very seriously, so I take personal offense to your offhand, unfounded, and ignorant comments.
-Hank
Dunno, can't register. Maybe they need to scale up from PHP.
You forgot to call him an insensitive clod!
Now where's my Nobel Prize for mdicine?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
You register a bill on the wheresgeorge site, that's the only way anyone knows if, when, and where the bill is spent. You certainly don't register, or perhaps even know, if you have a communicable disease.
So did the researchers who used your data set take this into account? For that matter, did you have a significant role in the study beyond providing the data set?
The blurb and article both seem to refer to at least one paragraph of text missing from the article containing the explaination of what they found. Something was posted from this site earlier today which was equally disappointing.
The article doesnt even list any of the results. No pictures. No graphs.
Another novel and interesting way I came across to predict the spread of infectious disease is the University of Iowa's Flu Prediction Market. A description from their page:
Information about influenza activity is diverse and widely distributed. Different health care professionals have different information regarding influenza activity. This information could be quite helpful in predicting future influenza activity if it could be aggregated and analyzed efficiently. However, because this information is disparate, standard research and statistical methods have not proven to be effective. Thus, the medical community does not have access to accurate influenza forecasts. The Influenza Prediction Market is an attempt to satisfy the need for accurate information regarding future influenza activity.
The first experimental prediction market was the Iowa Electronic Market (IEM). It has developed methods to predict future events ranging from election results to movie box office receipts and has a forecasting record substantially superior to alternative mechanisms. We propose that markets for infectious diseases may be useful for predicting infectious disease activity quickly, accurately, and inexpensively by aggregating the expert opinion of health care professionals.
They're currently working on expanding the system, but with their current market they give various health care workers $100 they can bid with, and depending on how accurate their bidding is they can get additional money.
I demand that the parent be modded informative! This could help people if there was ever a zombie epidemic!
That's probably not the intent of the law. It's a make-work program. Instead of people pumping their own gas, the stations have to hire a few employees to do the work for them. It's basicaly govornment mucking about with the economy, since the drivers are now essentialy being forced to pay an unidentified tax in the form of slightly higher prices. I'm sure whatever politician thought this up probably threw in some verbage about 'safety' of using 'profesionals' to pump the gas to try and justify the law.
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
So did the researchers who used your data set take this into account? For that matter, did you have a significant role in the study beyond providing the data set?
I did not take part in the study, I only provided the data. The data removed from the data set are entries that are obviously fake - for instance two entries thousands of miles apart, entered from the same machine. Or people who intentionally snail-mail bills to each other.
First, only the FRB can judge if a bill is unfit to be re-issued. You can't, a bank can't, a merchant can't. Second, the website simply tracks bills by serial number, and works if bills are marked or not. The site does not encourage or endorse the defacement of currency. I am forbidden by law to sell rubber stamps that do so. What the users do and purchase on their own accord is between them and their lawyer.
Press Release Check it!
- John Smilanick (http://www.johnsmilanick.com/
I thought it was common knowledge that many/most/(all?) cell phones have enabled GPS tracking technologies. It's part of the e911 efforts and was encouraged by the FCC http://www.fcc.gov/911/enhanced/ to better pinpoint emergency callers' locations. Here's an article that I haven't read that seems to take a closer look at the situation: http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/July-August-200 3/feature_koerner_julaug03.msp/
I thought you are talking about this.
Great.
Now that the infrastructure is in place, we just need a system to let the dollar bill reproduce themselves so the analogy will be perfect !!!
Actually, i am sure that some people have been constantly working on it from quite some time
g
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history - Tom Veneziano
Scientists did similar epidemiology research on the game World of Warcraft when the plague swept through it owning all the lowbies shortly after the release of Zul Gurub.
Check out my women's designer clothing store.
For all you hosers out there ;) there is a canadian version here:
http://www.whereswilly.com/
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
...model the spread of infectious disease
Which OS are they using? Windows or Linux?
Thank you.
It is the difference between Sociology and Psychology, and a lot of people seem to take it personally.
If food stores in a given country drop below a certain level, you can make a reasonable prediction of the chances of open rebellion breaking out. That's Sociology. If socioeconomic indicators drop X%, you can predict with relative accuracy an increase in suicide rates of Y%. That's Sociology. If you put a million people in a trust game, you know roughly how many of them are going to stab eachother in the back for a given payout level. That's Sociology.
If you tried to make the same predictions about an individual person, you'd find that you had no fucking clue what that one person was going to do. That's Psychology.
Sociologists aren't making predictions about you, they make predictions about the average behaviors of average groups of people.
But you're not average. You're special. Everyone is special. That's fine, and not far from the truth. But people have weights pulling them towards one decision or another, and maybe you will say no and two of your friends will say yes. And you're all special. And throw a thousand people into that decision, and 60% will say no and 40% will say yes. And throw a million people in there and 64% will say no and 36% will say yes. And throw a billion people in there and 63.3% will say no and 36.7% will say yes.
Every individual person is special and unique, but take lots and lots and lots of people and patterns emerge. No one can predict what one person is going to do anymore than anyone can predict where a molecule in a cloud of gas is going to go. But you can still make accurate predictions about which way the wind is blowing.
The ______ Agenda
If you're like me, you're probably wondering just why the hell anyone would pay for Slashdot, let alone want to support it. As it turns out, Slashdot already has all the features you need to completely disable all advertisements without paying those greedy slobs at VA Software a cent. All you need is a DOM-compliant browser, such as Mozilla or Konqueror, and the User Slashbox. With disgustingly-placed new full-page ads [pknet.com] now arriving, the time has come to show that we users will not let ourselves be advertised into submission.
:-)
Follow these five easy steps and never see another Slashdot ad again:
Go into your Homepage Preferences [slashdot.org].
Scroll down to the "User Space" textarea, and paste the following four lines of HTML in there:
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://pknet.com/~joe/adkiller.js"></sc ript>
<script type="text/javascript"><!--
delAds();
--></script>
(click here [pknet.com] to download the adkiller javascript code and put it on your own webspace, in case you don't trust me
Scroll down the list of slashboxes, and make sure the "User Space" checkbox (inexplicably located between "MP3.com" and "Myther.com") is checked.
Return to the front page [slashdot.org], and your Slashbox should be there, quietly zapping all iframes and banner-shaped images on the page.
There is no step 5!! It's that easy.
There are a few problems, however:
Opera doesn't seem to work with this at all.
Internet Explorer won't automatically remove the ads, but by appending the following to the above code:
<a href="javascript:delAds()">Click to delete ads</a>
and clicking the new link in your Slashbox, the ads will go away.
The User Slashbox only shows up on index.pl and articles.pl pages, so comment and user pages will still have ads. Luckily, the article pages seem to be the only ones running the obnoxious new full-page ads [pknet.com], so this shouldn't be too annoying.
If you are a Javascript wizard and know how to make this script work on Opera or IE, please tell me. Ad-free Slashdot should be available to everyone!
They are basing their findings on people who remembered to take the time to report their bills on this website? What about the thousands or millions of people who don't? That would make for a pretty big error margin wouldn't it?
Not too sure about this one, I wonder how helpful it could actually be. Interested in their methods of tracking also.
You can assign each book a reference number at the site. Crossers can leave a book at any location once they are done. Those who pick the book can then goto the site to login information about where they picked it from and etc.
Pro's and cons to each mechanism:
Dollar bills:- Better to track since they are more widespread in usage as oppose to an eclectic few who might be interested in reading particular books (tastes come into play).
Books:- Their network holds uniform across borders. Dollar bills on the other hand may not be as exchangeable in another country as they are in the U.S.
Using games to track people is tricky though. I did a lot of research on this, and my findings showed that 80% of the population of the world are Night Elf females who just turned 18 and want to chat.
/syle
I didn't realize a Slashdotting was underway, so I just signed up and plunked in a few bills. Kind of a postmodern way to solve the Slashdot Effect, huh? So it's up now.
Just when you think you've seen it all on the internet... truly excellent that it helped scientists, too. Weird and fun.
Also, the site is http://www.wheresgeorge.com/ but http://www.whereisgeorge.com/ redirects to the former anyway.
Q: What did the comedian say to the crowd?
A: If I knew, this joke would be funny.
Unfortunately, this is not particularly new, either: for the past several years, physicists have been "discovering" problems, and models, that the SNA folks have known about for quite some time. To give credit where due, physicists' quantitative models for these problems are generally well-constructed, and I appreciate the fact that their entrance into the field has placed more emphasis on quantitative methods. However, their assumptions are not necessarily well-explored, and so their conclusions are not infrequently invalid.
It's true that I haven't checked out this paper in detail, and it's possible that they really did come up with something new. But Nature (the publication, that is :) ) has a way of publishing physicists' papers in the field of SNA without checking to see whether the authors have done their homework...and a cursory check of the references suggests that in this case they may not have.
I remember some girls from my "parties, booze, drugs, and women who like booze and drugs" days who should be tagged and tracked. I'm pretty certain we could learn a lot from them about the spreading of infectious diseases.
I wonder if credit card data could be used instead.
So I guess the plan is...
Hmm. Sounds too easy. There's gotta be a "???" somewhere there.
Theres a UK version of the site - DoshTracker
95% of all computer errors occur between chair and keyboard (TM)
So the healthiest place to be is in the printshop where they make the notes and the worst spot is where they destroy the notes. I would alarm the union if I worked in that building. Can't be that they do not have some laundries at strategic spots like Las Vegas. The mob understands the problem.
Europeans can track their euro-bills here: http://www.eurobilltracker.com/
before.
"There are three kinds of lies. Plain lies, Damn lies, and Statistics."
Obligatory M. Twain Sig:
"Post No Bills"
I have gotten a 'Where's George' and an 'I Grew Hemp' dollar bill.
Apparently George was growing Hemp to help alleviate the side effects of treatment for certain infectious diseases.
Man that guy was so ahead of his time.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
M-O-O-N, that spells epidemic
Everyone on Slashdot should enter these bills as "have it in my possesion now" and they would have data that would show FTL travel in an atmosphere :)
$1 - 2003 - H55702090C
$1 - 2001 - F00883623F
$5 - 2001 - CE12036300A
Nothing like playing mind games with researchers...
"Computer Scientists can count to 1024 on their fingers" (non-mutant, non-mutilatated, human computer scientists)
Those bills have been deleted and blocked from entry on the site, as will any others you post here.
As I said, I take data integrity very seriously, and tricks and games like this will not be tolerated.
-Hank
The only reason for all the fancy artwork is to make it hard to duplicate the bills - if everyone could print their own money, they would and eventually it wouldn't be worth anything.
Thanks for clearing that up. I've been wondering about that for a long time. Now I'll have to find another life long question to answer.
As a long time participant, it's VERY hard to enter information wrong. You can't get the bill year wrong and have the s/n entered, you can't forget to change denomination...
And yes...I do own one of the now illicit stamps...I wonder if I should post AC
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I spend a significant amount of time EVERY DAY to ferret out fake data. I have several automated processes that search for and remove any data that does not fit certain criteria. I take this site, and the data integrity very seriously, so I take personal offense to your offhand, unfounded, and ignorant comments.
.. and then claiming that this study will help predict the movements of individuals during the next RED ALERT EMERGENCY PLAGUE that comes our way, is just irresponsible.
Interesting.
First of all, you claim to have an automated process that removes data that does not fit a certain criteria. You do not know if the data is invalid, that is removed, only that it fits a certain criterion. There clearly could be data removed that was valid, and very clearly there is invalid data that sneaks by you.
You can not prevent someone from calling a friend with a serial number. You can not prevent someone from using their work machine, and entering an address that is a thousand miles away. IP blocks are assignable, ARIN is not always up to date, and even if you spend big bugs for IP location services, it is not always perfect.. just most of the time so. Heck, you can't even determine if someone with wiped cookies and a dynamic ip address is entering the same bill twice!
Regardless of all your attempts to make data secure, researchers using that data for a study
You, as a webmaster, are providing a FUN service. That's great, and it sounds like you are trying to take some steps to mitigate funny business. However, these researchers are using data that is extremely untrustworthy. There is literally no way to validate any of this data. _NOT_ _ANY_ _WAY_. Further, people that tend to enter serial numbers on your website, have a distinct personality profile. They have a specific economic position in society. They have a specific skill set which is, for one, the ability to use a computer. For example, I do not believe that the elderly would use your site much, as computer use in the elderly is less than the rest of the population. The poor with no computer at home or at work might be less likely to use such a service. All of these population sections might be more likely to spread a plague.. the poor for lack of money to afford masks, the necessity to continue to work when sick, when others can take time off. The elderly being more susceptible, and perhaps visiting relatives during a holiday season.
My whole point here, is that while your data is reliable to be used on a website that is only entertainment based, it is not reliable for any sort of scientific study. _Any_ sort of scientific study. It's not a cross section of society, and it is also not reliable for such a purpose.
If you take offence to that, you're off your rocker.
Still, the "international" piece is down. I can't enter the $1 I have for some 5-6 years by now in my wallet now, Poland. :)
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
2) Get every
3) Profit
Brilliant!
If you're trying to have a pissing contest to prove you know how to spoof the system and create bad data - congratulations - you win.
But with over 8 million "hits", and statistician will tell you that the data is statistically significant within some margin of error. Any researcher worth their weight will take bad data and outliers into consideration.
The overwhelming majority (easily > 99%) of the hits are valid. Most people (i.e. general public, not slashdotters or technical people) - who use my website don't know an IP address from a street address, and don't know cookies from brownies. I know my demographics very, very well - I know the types of people that participate on the site - YOU DO NOT. For instance, do you know how many times I've gotten an email from a user with the question "Where's the zip code on the dollar bill?" or sign on as "idioutuser@alo.com" or "hotmial.com" ?? ALOT OF THEM. We're not dealing with technical people, I'm usually dealing with people who can barely figure out how to log on and send email.
The very few people who do attempt to spoof the system are *usually* detected. I've gotten very good at the detecting the patterns of abuse after doing this for eight years. Do some slip bogus entries through - sure they do.. and that's why anyone using this dataset would take that into consideration.
www.wheresdeath.com
I think the "Where's George" idea is interesting and a clever way of mapping interpersonal, semi-anonymous human transaction pathways. The personal ones are easier to document because we remember them. It's too bad this can't also take into account electronic transactions initiated at points of sale.
The "bad science fiction" of this heading is a reference to Frank Herbert's atrocious novel* The White Plague wherein an well-intentioned but severely misguided scientist releases a plague that kills only (and all) women into the wild. The plague spreads by means of currency, which no one in the novel seems able to figure out until it is too late.
On the other hand, Asimov's Foundation series, where the concept of psychohistory is explored, is fantastic science fiction: thoughtful, subtle, and complex. It also avoids focusing on technology as such choosing to address the effects of technology on human intergalactic society. However, I don't think psychohistory's ability to predict with statistical certainty how humans will behave as an aggregate very closely resembles the "Where's George" mapping project.
*I don't generally despise Frank Herberrt as I loved the Dune series (up until God Emperor Dune after which they started sucking and then started being written posthumously by his son. Readers at Amazon, for whatever reason, appear to like this novel.
blog
Post seemed fine to me...
:D
MODS: Why flamebait? he didnt call anyone names or even get too upset, just explained about why his data is statistically signifigant. A little over sensitive today?
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Agent U.S.A Educational type simulation (U.S. States/Cities/Capitals) where the hero must fight an pandemic that travels via the railroad network.
Even I, with a limited knowledge of psychology, could predict how you are likey to behave in any instance if I have studied you long enough.
In that respect you are bound by who you are - in that way there is no free will.
Ask yourself this question: What would it take to change one of your fundamental behaviours? Truly if you are honest with yourself you know just how 'weak' you are in the face of any stimulous.
As a long time participant, it's VERY hard to enter information wrong. You can't get the bill year wrong and have the s/n entered, you can't forget to change denomination.
Yeah, but I can enter any locality I want, right? And possibly repeat that? Perhaps many times using different UAs and IPs? Right?
Where's George is a silly, worthless entertainment concept. It's scary to see anyone trying extrapolate meaning from it.