tinyurl.com/5wq8cw -> arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081111-google-meets-the-cdc-flu-tracking-by-search-trends.html
John Timmer | Published: November 11, 2008 - 05:22PM CT If you were to ask 1,000 people to come up with a list of words associated with the flu, chances are that a list of symptoms including head and muscle aches, cough, etc. A few Google engineers thought the same, and started using Google trends to track the appearance of flu-related terms in searches sent in from the US.
The basic principle behind this is pretty straightforward: when people are faced with something they're not quite sure about, they now turn to the web for answers. If someone falls prey to some of the typical flu symptoms, they're likely to want to know if what they're feeling is diagnostic and if there's much of it going around. As a result, Google should start seeing an upswing in searches for things relevant to the flu. Fortunately, they have a way of testing whether this common-sense expectation actually plays out in the real world. Google itself has access to several years of past data on searches.
annual data on the prevalence of the flu going back to 1999. Google ran the test and found that, although there are some differences in the levels, the general trends in the data lined up nicely, as shown on the graphic below, which was stolen from the Flu Trends website.
If the two items line up so well, why do we need both of them? The CDC actually obtains a lot more data than Google can, as it uses field data from a network of doctors to track the type of flu circulating and obtain more detailed information. The problem here is that this much work takes time, often more than a week.
flu incidence map shows data from the week that ended November 1st. Google can't hope to compete with the CDC when it comes to data, but it can do better when it comes to speed, as search results can be processed in real time. So far, the site doesn't offer much in the way of details on exactly what Google is looking for within its search data, but it does offer numerical data derived from when it crunched the numbers, so you can comb through the trends yourself, if you so desire. Those who would rather let Google do the work can check out a color coded map of the current search action. Based on past years, we're right on the verge of seeing a spike in the trend.
Rumor: iPhone OS 22 could land November 21 The date comes from an anonymous source at a Greek iPhone news site, but this update's timing isn't entirely unreasonable. After the release of two developer betas and a slew of new features have already been added, a pre-Thanksgiving release of iPhone OS 22 may hit the spot.
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