Statistical Mastery

Cellphone traces reveal you're so predictable

We may all like to consider ourselves free spirits. But a study of the traces left by 50,000 cellphone users over three months has conclusively proved that the truth is otherwise.

"We are all in one way or another boring," says Albert-László Barabási at the Center for Complex Network Research at Northeastern University in Boston, who co-wrote the study. "Spontaneous individuals are largely absent from the population."

Barabási and colleagues used three months' worth of data from a cellphone network to track the cellphone towers each person's phone connected to each hour of the day, revealing their approximate location. They conclude that regardless of whether a person typically remains close to home or roams far and wide, their movements are theoretically predictable as much as 93 per cent of the time.

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Just another instance of the machine understanding us better than we understand ourselves. Like renting a movie even though netflix says you won't like it. A few days later the formula laughs as you give it a low rating. The god in the machine knows you like no one else.

"Indeed the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows."

So much more valuable in the whole political economy [politonomy or ecolotics?] of things. $o much more valuable...