Entries Tagged 'what if' ↓

“I wonder if you have to have a dog if you want to take a dog obedience class.”

Genius idea:

http://www.google.org/flutrends/

Fantastic way to use search data and to watch an epidemic unfold.

How can communities utilize this data to minimize an epidemic?  It might be the case that by the time the data shows a danger- it’s too late, as the spikes indicate the epidemic has successfully spread.

Imagine if you could be alerted to any acceleration of  a trend. Say you limit the search to a region and see a doubling or tripling of searches over a 2 day period (click on Arkansas, for example, as of today). Would having a sort of ‘snow day’ actually increase net productivity for a given period of time, considering that if you didn’t, you’d have a larger portion of the populace infected? Though the flu is communicable over about a week’s time, it appears, and you can infect others before you experience symptoms. Would it be worth having a text-message alert system where residents could sign up to be alerted to accelerations in the data? – and could that be done without causing paranoia and/or causing people to remove themselves from society unnecessarily?

And what’s the difference between Idaho and Oregon – there’s no scale to measure by, but it appears they are hypochondriacs in Idaho. –actually, I’m guessing that’s the effect of a lower population density on the spread of the disease. Compare Idaho to California and you can infer that higher density in California enables fast-spreading infections, whereas the infection travels slowly in ID.

My kids have just gotten over fevers – and the teacher said it went around the school. It does make you wonder if there’d be a net-gain in school days if everyone were kept home from school for a, say, 3-5 day period, at the beginning of an upward trend, rather than having an infection cycle over a couple of weeks.

What if your life were a series of clues?

What if each of you were an experiment, being fed data, to see if you could uncover your own personal meaning. What if you’re constantly being fed clues to some future event, clues that if read properly would allow you to navigate perfectly.

What if the steam curling up from your cup of coffee this morning spelled out the car accident you’ll have tomorrow morning, if you fail to take public transport?

What if exact bus fare is hidden under the third pillow in the old orange couch.

Have you looked?