Legal Research

Follow the Money

Interesting story in the NY Times about how researchers at Northwestern University are modeling the spread of swine flu using data from, among other things, the Where’s George Website. For those of you who haven’t visited the site, Where’s George has allowed you to track the movement of U.S. currency since 1998. They’re currently tracking more than 150 bills totaling more than $800 million. Personally, I never visited WG until today because I always knew the flow of *my* money — I earn it and the greedy, selfish, useless people who live with me squander it by …

[cough]

Anyway, it’s a brilliant idea to use the flow of money as a model for the type of face-to-face interactions that are instrumental in the spread of an infectious disease. And if all this hoo-hah about swine flu has gotten you to the point where you’re waiting for the axe to fall, here are words of wisdom from the director of the team from Northwestern:

“People have a very weird perception of large numbers. If you have 2,000 cases of flu [which is their projection] in a country of 300 million, most people think they're going to be one of the 2,000, not one of the 299,998,000.”

P.S. - Didja see all the Macs in the picture? Didja?

Full post as published by Jenkins Webblits on May 04, 2009 (boomark / email).