
Bill Gates: ‘Death is something we really understand extremely well’ - Libertatea
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/17/bill-gates-death-is-something-we-really-understand-extremely-well/
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DanBC
> EK: The logistics of the operation seem basically impossible. How do you
> ensure you hit every tiny village in a mountainous, rural, poor country?

> BG: We began using satellite maps and we’re finding particularly in Nigeria
> we were missing a lot of settlements, a lot of nomadic people. The thing we
> were missing the most was a village would be on a border, and one government
> would say, “Oh, that’s on their side,” and the other guy would say, “No,
> that’s on their side.” So your chance of getting polio was super elevated if
> you happened to live on the border between these local government
> administrative boundaries.

How do they use that satellite data? Do they just have people scrutinising
Google Earth? Or is there some kind of software solution to find settlements?

People have posted about how to find various things in images ('Where's wally
/ waldo?'; Coke cans; etc) so it'd be interesting to see if people can find
small settlements on maps.

EDIT:

([http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8479058/how-do-i-find-
wal...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8479058/how-do-i-find-waldo-with-
mathematica)) and HN discussion
(<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3367865>)

(<http://research.google.com/pubs/pub37111.html>) (No HN comments)

(<https://s3.amazonaws.com/jsevart-web/waldo_public.pdf>) (No HN comments)

([http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10168686/algorithm-
improv...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10168686/algorithm-improvement-
for-coca-cola-can-shape-recognition#)) HN Discussion
(<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5002021>)

------
rossjudson
Interesting points about how data analysis can drive understanding of health
problems and solutions, world-wide.

