A "rash" of infectious disease tweets? Not going there. The goal of our hackathon, in the spirit of true hackathoning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackathon was to "intensively collaborate" and pound out some working code of interest regarding our client's programmatic areas. It was a good exercise, in that we had 15 people, pizza, beer and after two days produced some working code. It was certainly more fun than going into the office...
--Doug On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 8:17 PM, Steve Smith <sasm...@swcp.com> wrote: > Doug - > > > Yep, although who's to say that an onslaught of Nyquil twittertizing does > not signify the beginning of a flu outbreak? > > Righto! That is the point... how to distinguish a rash of NyQuil fanbois > extolling it's virtues in 140 chars or less as they subdue early symptoms > of a resurging 1918 Influenza outbreak from a catchy jingle > P&G/Vicks/NyQuil's latest admen thought up? > > Again, I'm not sure of the context of your hackathon (by it's name, it > seems more like teambuilding/demonstration than seriously attacking a > known/well-vetted problem?) but maybe there was talk of precedent... of > more serious studies in how to find useful correlations? > > I'd expect careful study would reveal a phased rollout of terms... that > people mutter (twitter?) about different things at the onset of their own > symptoms or of those around them than they do as it becomes a full-fledged > experience ( e.g. Achy, Sniffly, Congested vs "Sick Day"). And of course > there might be an abrupt *rise* or *fall* in tweet frequencies from the > same people as they take a day off from work and/or switch from DayQuil to > NyQuil and try to sleep it off. > > Also, the seriousness of symptoms might be reflected in Google Trends, of > people doing "research" as opposed to just mumble-tweeting about it. > > - Steve > > > --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> > * > 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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