NYT and MC Hammer - What do they have in common?

I was reading a NY Times article this morning that really struck me. Here is the intro:

"There is a new common symptom of the flu, in addition to the usual aches, coughs, fevers and sore throats. Turns out a lot of ailing Americans enter phrases like “flu symptoms” into Google and other search engines before they call their doctors.

That simple act, multiplied across millions of keyboards in homes around the country, has given rise to a new early warning system for fast-spreading flu outbreaks, called Google Flu Trends.

Tests of the new Web tool from Google.org, the company’s philanthropic unit, suggest that it may be able to detect regional outbreaks of the flu a week to 10 days before they are reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

We already know that Google is the best at everything (that's not my point here). Google is using the internet as a predictive tool. Instead of waiting for events to occur (and data to be collected and analyzed) here Google is getting predictive data immediately. This technique cuts out the labor (at time) intensive data collection process, thereby reaching conclusions much more quickly and, in this case, slowing the spread of a flu virus via quick dissemination of information. What a powerful tool! Statisticians would sell their collective souls to the devil just to get Google's search data...

In other news, a friend in Shanghai sent me the following YouTube video that made me laugh hysterically for at least a minute. You can learn a lot about China just by watching this video (note: my favorite part is the person in the background).



- Jon