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New map of the US based on how dollar bills move
- sp332 14y agoWhat's the deal with Pennsylvania being cut in half?
- dubfan 14y agoPittsburgh is closer in proximity and culture to Ohio than it is to Philadelphia. The Appalachian Mountains bisect the state, and the areas outside the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia metro areas have low population density. This area is sometimes called "Pennsyltucky"
- sp332 14y agoOh man, I forgot about the mountains. Most of the other non-state-border boundaries seem to be rivers, but I forgot mountains!
- rory096 14y agoThe border also roughly follows the path of I-81.
- crapshoot101 14y agoAs a former Yinzer resident, I recall the James Carville line about Pittsburgh and Philly, with Alabama in the middle.
- dublinben 14y agoIt is the border between two federal reserve districts. http://www.federalreserve.gov/otherfrb.htm http://www.federalreserve.gov/otherfrb.htm
- fghh45sdfhr3 14y agoThis only tracks paper currency, so it is an odd measure.
- thatthatis 14y agoPaper currency generally travels on a person from place to place (as opposed to being mailed), egro the oddness is exactly what makes it a surprisingly good data source for this kind of work -- paper currency is a proxy for human movement.
- electromagnetic 14y agoActually, assuming this is using only dollar bills, this is likely following the movement of poor humans. Credit and debit and large bills are typically in the hands of the middle to upper class. To me this is an excellent map of how "trapped" people are in the situations they are in. The motility of the poor is something that has been restricted for thousands of years, and something we're supposed to be improving. I understand this likely resembles a map of how far people will travel from major economic centres, but having grown up in an area of extremely high unemployment in the UK and having moved to an area of extremely low unemployment, making the poor willing to move has recognizable economic benefits. I know in Canada, where I now live, EI (unemployment) will pay moving expenses for someone to move to a lower unemployment area.
- chimeracoder 14y agoThis is incredibly similar to a map of the twelve Federal Reserve Districts - so similar, in fact, that at first I thought that's what they were displaying: http://www.federalreserve.gov/otherfrb.htm http://www.federalreserve.gov/otherfrb.htm Note in particular the split in Pennsylvania, which represents the Appalachian divide - a divide that is both geographical and economic in nature.
- pacala 14y agoSimilar, but not the same. California / Cascadia / Mormonland form different entities on his map, but are all lumped under San Francisco Federal Reserve District.
- skwirl 14y agoThat isn't a coincidence. The federal reserve district banks distribute the notes to commercial banks in their districts, and, as worded on wikipedia: "A Federal Reserve Bank can retire notes that return from circulation by exchanging them for collateral that the bank posted for an earlier issue. Retired notes in good condition are held in the bank's vault for future issues." He effectively came up with a way to reverse engineer the district boundaries.
- agwa 14y agoSo in other words, the movement of dollar bills is caused mainly by the federal reserve district banks redistributing them, and not by traveling individuals? That sure makes this map useless. I thought that dark line between New York and New England was fishy...
- TheCoelacanth 14y agoIt's not completely useless. For instance, DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia and NYC are grouped together with only a faint line on the border of districts 3 and 5 and no line of the border of districts 2 and 3, with much stronger lines separating DC and Baltimore from the rest of district 5 and NYC from the rest of district 2. Also, note the strong separation between Virginia and West Virginia, which are part of the same district, but no separation between West Virginia and any part of district 4. You can definitely see the effect of the Federal Reserve districts on the map, but there are clearly other important factors.
- buss 14y agoClick. Click. Ad. Click. Ad. Click. Click. Ad. ugh.
- zheng 14y agoYes, how rude that a website operator wants to monetize their content.
- anigbrowl 14y agoLike everything else, there are smart and stupid ways of going about this legitimate objective. This is an example of the latter.
- SiVal 14y agoAnd what would the smart way have been?
- GhotiFish 14y agowell. I'm no expert, but I can sure take a shot of some things you might want to avoid! *Not marking ads as ads *Presenting advertisements with the same presentation inline with normal content, potentially confusing the reader. *Assuming that no one would block the ads -or recognizing they would and not caring *Not making use of the space in the... article! I did not notice I could scroll down, either. Why didn't they put the ads there?!
- mkr-hn 14y agoPeople will put up with a lot to get to a piece of content that's sufficiently compelling. This probably makes more money than a "smart" option.
- jlarocco 14y agoThen he should charge money for it. Of course he would never do that, because the content he added simply wasn't very valuable at all, and he's primarily saying, "Hey, look at what some other guy did! And while you're at it click on my ads!"
- pnathan 14y agoIt's fascinating; in the areas I am familiar with, you can see the Portland-Seattle corridor and the Deseret region. Reminds me of the cultural maps of the US.
- mjmahone17 14y agoThe researcher's explanation of his research: http://rocs.northwestern.edu/research/wgstory.html http://rocs.northwestern.edu/research/wgstory.html Edit: this link doesn't explain this specific set of maps, but it does explain a little about how he got the idea of using wheresgeorge.com and what it allowed him to do (as of ~2009).
- gus_massa 14y agoIt´s very strange that Memphis is over one of the boundaries. It's the only big named city over a border. I looked in the map, because I don't know the zone. (I hope I readed the map correctly.) Memphis is in south west corner of Tennessee state but the city continues informally but smoothly to the south in the Mississippi state. On the west side the city is the Mississippi river, and crossing the river is the Arkansas state. This area has much more green fields and few building zones. So Memphis is not on the border, it is just right next to the east side of that border. Map: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=memphis&hl=en&ll=35.019875,-90.078278&spn=0.537587,0.977783&hnear=Memphis,+Shelby,+Tennessee&t=h&z=10 http://maps.google.com/maps?q=memphis&hl=en&ll=35.01...
- coldtea 14y agoAren't there technically two cities, called "East" and "West" Memphis respectively?
- gus_massa 14y agoAt least in the map, West Memphis is much smaller than East Memphis. Population from Wikipedia: (East) Memphis: 672,277 (2011) West Memphis: 26,245 (2010) Memphis metropolitan: 1,316,100 (2010) (includes both)
- avyfain 14y agoI do research with professor Brockmann at Northwestern University, not on human mobility, but investment networks. If you want a quick overview of the idea behind this mapping of the US and the algorithms used, you should watch this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn32vavZqvg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn32vavZqvg
- mkross 14y agoThe red linkage graphs would be much more comprehensible with edge bundling[1]. As it is, you get a ton of red lines that are hard to decipher. In order to show emphasis, some of the lines are orange. [1] Something akin to https://www.evernote.com/shard/s9/res/11fab8e3-d623-4b58-a8dd-aaf24ac83edd.pdf https://www.evernote.com/shard/s9/res/11fab8e3-d623-4b58-a8d.... I'm sure there are libraries out that that will do this for you, but the algorithm in that paper isn't too hard to implement. :)
- Andy_Keller 14y agoYour link yields "Access denied."
- RobotCaleb 14y agoThe northwest region reminded me of Cascadia/Cascadiopolis from Metatropolis. http://io9.com/5169857/metatropolis-is-the-best-kind-of-urban-renewal http://io9.com/5169857/metatropolis-is-the-best-kind-of-urba...
- LancerSykera 14y ago>normally someone in the audience says, 'Oh, this makes perfect sense." This is exactly what I was thinking when I saw Pennsylvania cut in half (actually, I said "well no shit"). Those of us on the eastern side of that line generally regard western PA as a whole different state.
- futhey 14y agoProof of Cascadia