

Approaching the Limit of Predictability in Human Mobility - mazsa
http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/131011/srep02923/full/srep02923.html

======
mazsa
"In this study we analyze the travel patterns of 500,000 individuals in Cote
d'Ivoire using mobile phone call data records. By measuring the uncertainties
of movements using entropy, considering both the frequencies and temporal
correlations of individual trajectories, we find that the theoretical maximum
predictability is as high as 88%. To verify whether such a theoretical limit
can be approached, we implement a series of Markov chain (MC) based models to
predict the actual locations visited by each user. Results show that MC models
can produce a prediction accuracy of 87% for stationary trajectories and 95%
for non-stationary trajectories. Our findings indicate that human mobility is
highly dependent on historical behaviors, and that the maximum predictability
is not only a fundamental theoretical limit for potential predictive power,
but also an approachable target for actual prediction accuracy."

