The Anonymous Widower

Google Flu Trends

I found reference to Google Flu Trends in The Economist in an article about how Google are searching blogs and other information to find out what is going on.

An interesting graph is shown, but why are the UK, Finland and Denmark left out?

I wonder if the same techniques could be used to check for relationships.  For instance, I wonder if my being a coeliac means that I am more likely to have strokes.  So what if there are a lot of blog posts, with these two words in them?  Obviously, it would need powerful and correct statistical analysis.

As an aside here, some years ago I wrote a program that used Google to deep search the Internet, create a database of all possible results and then display them in a Daisy chart.  It showed a lot of promise, but I then had other things to do.  That’s my life all over.

March 20, 2010 - Posted by AnonW | Computing | Coeliac/Gluten-Free, Daisy, Google, Internet, Stroke