Hacker News Reader

Google's flu trends project illustrates the power of this idea.

Google pegs down regional flu trends faster than the CDC, who has the advantage of pulling data from thousands of regional hospitals, etc.

Simple idea, great illustration in original paper:

http://www.google.org/about/flutrends/manuscript.pdf

Video version:

http://www.google.org/flutrends/about/how.html

View on HN

One of the reasons CDC can't predict as quickly as Google can is because it takes weeks for data "from thousands of regional hospitals, etc." to get to CDC.

Not to mention that there are more top-notch data engineers in a Google cafeteria at any given moment, than there are in the entire CDC payroll.

Not only that, but hospitals have to wait for confirmed laboratory test results before they report then to the CDC. That kind of reporting is certainly not done in real time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com