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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."
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.
Overall statistical laws don't say much about free will or not. There are always going to be regular patterns in behaviour (caused by things like the fact that most people don't want to walk 10 miles to work every day).
Governments would love equations that predict human behavior on a macroscopic scale.
The Australian Reserve Bank uses equations to predict macroeconomic conditions and adjusts interest rates accordingly.
"The physicists were intrigued: Like viruses, money is transported by people from place to place. " The problem is that you give a bill to only one person. Most disease is not like that.