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."

Comments

Oddly enough...

[Hindustu]

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.

Shades of Psychohistory

[Entropy248]

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.

Re:Shades of Psychohistory

[mattjb0010]

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.

Re:Shades of Psychohistory

[houstonbofh]

"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.

Obligatory...

[mshiltonj]

Zombie Infection Simulation Machine!

Brians! Must eat brains!

Re:Business model

[OfficialWheresGeorge]

The is no "business model". The site DOES NOT SELL RUBBER STAMPS. It stopped selling rubber stamps in 2000 at the request of the U.S. Secret Service.

It's also not "these guys"... it's "this guy".

Please stop spreading this disinformation.

Load of nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:erm? is the data even legit? Yes, it is.

[OfficialWheresGeorge]

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