Yep, although who's to say that an onslaught of Nyquil twittertizing does not signify the beginning of a flu outbreak?
--Doug On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 7:40 PM, Steve Smith <sasm...@swcp.com> wrote: > > > It also seems as if subtracting news items might be important (for your > purposes) since I assume you are looking for early detection of people > having these symptoms rather than the echoes of trends in popular media (or > an advertising push by NyQuil) ? > > > Doug - > > So the point is to attempt "early detection" of an outbreak of something > based on what people are tweeting? > > ( "influenza", "flu", "cold", "fever", "H1N1", "H3N2", "sneezing", > "aching", "ache", "achy", "congested" ) > > It certainly sounds like there might be some utility to it, but I'm > wondering what kinds of reasoning went into this? Is it based on any > models of who tweets or what they are likely to tweet about? > > Was it more of a demonstration or team-building exercise, or does someone > expect to actually put it to use? > > So, the data was pre-archived, but I presume a more useful version would > work from more real-time data and probably would have a sliding time > (exponential moving average?) window? > > Do you know about Norm Packard's (of Eudaimonic, Prediction, > ProtoLife<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Packard>fame) latest venture > called > LuckySort <http://luckysort.com/>? It's R interface is called > TopicWatchr<http://luckysort.com/products/r-package>and seems to be doing > something roughly similar (but without specific > geolocation?). Their examples suggest that they are aiming this at the > Investment sector. > > Our own Mick Thompson (well, SFX if not FRIAM) was working on related > things before the startup Collecta went dark... I'm not sure if he's still > in this game (or on this list?). I used Collecta when it was alive... it > aggregated Twitter as well as some subset of blog and maybe newsfeeds? > For example, stuck in northbound traffic on I-25 near La Cienega one time, > I was able to discover within seconds of stopping my vehicle that 3 people > also stuck in traffic had mentioned that they too were stuck and one of > them was close enough to the front of the line to see that it was a fuel > truck that had been involved in an accident so they weren't inclined to let > anyone past it until the HazMat or Fire folks had determined there was no > risk. On the other hand a CB Radio and/or a Police Scanner (oldschool) > would have told me all that and more in time to take the La Cienega exit > and frontage on into town with only a minor delay. > > > > One of my projects is funded by NIH, and it sponsored (read: paid for) a > group of 15 of us software developer types from 10 different organizations > across the country who are working on the project to get together last week > in Las Vegas, NV to conduct a two-day hackathon. We split into three > groups, and my group produced some rough, ugly, but working Python and R > code. > > The Python code conducts keyword searches on archived 1% Twitter API > data, filtered to only search only those tweets that have valid > geolocation data. The short piece of R code calls a Google map API and > plots the data on a Google map in a browser, allowing the user to click on > the geolocated map points to view the originator's tweet text. > > Our next step will be to replace the R code with Python for calling the > Google map API. > > Here, it's ugly, but it's free. Don't say I never gave you anything. > > --Doug > > -- > *Doug Roberts > d...@parrot-farm.net* > *http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins*<http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins> > * > 505-455-7333 - Office > 505-672-8213 - Mobile* > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > -- *Doug Roberts d...@parrot-farm.net* *http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins*<http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins> * <http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins> 505-455-7333 - Office 505-672-8213 - Mobile*
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