Using a popular Internet game that traces the travels of dollar bills, scientists have unveiled statistical laws of human travel in the United States, and developed a mathematical description that can be used to model the spread of infectious disease in this country.
In the game, participants can register a dollar bill, of any denomination, and monitor its geographic circulation. Using the game data, physicists developed a powerful mathematical theory that describes the observed movements of travelers amazingly well over distances from just a few kilometers to a few thousand. The study represents a major breakthrough for the mathematical modeling of the spread of epidemics.
References:
Nature news release
"The scaling laws of human travel," Nature, Jan. 26, 2006, p462, D. Brockmann, L. Hufnagel and T. Geisel, doi:10.1038/nature04292.
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