

Using Gowalla checkins to predict alcohol-related travel - chronomex
http://xrtc.net/f/projects/gowallahol.shtml

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chronomex
This was my final project for the quarter. I was surprised at how many Gowalla
profiles were matched exactly by voter registrations.

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jrockway
Some very interesting results, especially that only 20 out of 1000+ people
sampled made their names on Facebook private.

Something that I thought was strange is that I usually go out drinking near
work rather than near home, and then ride my bike or take the bus home
afterwards. I also routinely walk more than a mile. The article seems to
consider this uncommon, but it's common amongst my group of city-dwelling
friends.

It would also be interesting to use this data to see how public transportation
affects drinking. When I go drinking at a bar that's near the Green Line,
which closes around 1:20am, I make sure to finish up and leave around 1
(unless the extra hour is really going to make a difference to me). When I go
drinking near a bar that's near the Red Line, which is 24 hours, I rarely
leave before closing time. Am I normal? Mining the data could tell me :)

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chronomex
I thought I had my Facebook set to maximal privacy, but it turned out that I
didn't. I'm not too surprised at this, to be honest.

You think you can do something else cool with the data? Have at it! :) Let me
know if other data such as more detailed user profile info will help.

[http://xrtc.net/f/projects/gowallahol/gowalla_checkins.csv.g...](http://xrtc.net/f/projects/gowallahol/gowalla_checkins.csv.gz)

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expertio
I have to say this is so cool! Police department could use this data to do
roadside random breath test. And there will be less killer on the road.

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jrockway
Probably not. The number of people driving drunk is much lower than the number
of people driving distracted or driving stupid.

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evolvingstuff
There may indeed be more distracted/stupid people, but the inebriated ones
cause about twice the number of deaths overall in the US:

[http://www.cdc.gov/MotorVehicleSafety/distracted_driving/ind...](http://www.cdc.gov/MotorVehicleSafety/distracted_driving/index.html)

[http://www.cdc.gov/MotorVehicleSafety/Impaired_Driving/impai...](http://www.cdc.gov/MotorVehicleSafety/Impaired_Driving/impaired-
drv_factsheet.html)

