allegra means happy—and is also my name

nickturse:

Twitter Map of NYC

The sharp eye of Marina Galperina at Animal brings you Eric Fischer’s Twitter traffic map of New York.  Galperina writes, “This is New York, with New Yorkers’ trips routed and their geotag density mapped out in “10000 points, 30000 vectors.” What do we learn? Broadway is ‘the spine.’ Well, that does make sense.”

Okay I’ve expanded on this, because I was tired as hell when I first posted it.

I’m skeptical of this, not only because I’m not sure how they would differentiate commuter from tourist. The area code doesn’t work because of everyone with a cellphone who originally came from out-of-town—maybe billing address? but that seems like an invasion of my privacy. The data collected from twitter shouldn’t include where I live.

Also, the trains in Manhattan are underground and you don’t get service. That cuts out a lot of subway commuters in Manhattan, and let me tell you, that’s a lot of people. I mean I guess you could use data collected before and after you go underground, but that makes the actual commute look weak. I can tell you from experience: the 4-5-6 is an incredibly congested line because it’s the only train that runs up and down the east side of Manhattan, and also services the Bronx and Brooklyn. There’s not a lot of activity there. Meanwhile, I don’t even think I can see the A-B-C-D along CPW, and that’s another major commuter line.

So yeah, this is flawed as hell.

(via camilladilla)