You can find it here:
Google Flu Trends
I want you to spend about 30 minutes exploring the map, and then report back here what you found.
Have fun!
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Google Flu Trends - Period 1
You can find it here:
Google Flu Trends
I want you to spend about 30 minutes exploring the map, and then report back here what you found.
Have fun!
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22 comments:
I found it surprising that mexico had such a low amout of people who hand the flu. I heard awhile ago that mexico had the highest amount of people with the flu. Plus the borders of mexico and U.S.A are attached so i'm surprised that the disease hasn't spread from there.
I noticed that when an intense amount of flu activity was shown in an area, the area tended to be pretty big. There weren’t many tiny places that had an intense amount of flu activity. I’m wondering first of all what exactly they mean by intense. Does this mean that it’s a very bad flu, or that many people have it? Also, it makes me wonder if the worse a flu is, the easier it can spread. If you had a worse flu, you would probably be coughing and sneezing more, which would enable your germs to travel faster. I can see how this would make the intense flu areas bigger.
Something that I’m really curious about is why one whole continent doesn’t have the same flu activity. It’s not as though there’s an invisible wall between countries, that keeps certain things in or out. How come the U.S. is greater affected by the flu than Canada? Why is the flu activity in Hungary so much higher than in Russia when they aren’t very far away from each other?
Some areas aren’t colored in at all. Does this data represent areas that aren’t affected by the flu, or is this where Goggle’s research ends. Little things like that make me wonder. Not so much the solid fact, but the way things are laid out. It’s just interesting to me.
Something that interests me, (though it’s not really on the chart) is how exactly does a flu get started? Looking at this chart made so many other questions come up that after a while, I was more thinking about the flu in general than the chart. I know how the flu spreads, but I’m just curious about how it starts. How is the disease acutally formed, and why do we have disease in the first place? Is it because it makes our immune system stronger?
Overall, I think this project kind of helped me, because I was soaking in the information, but it was also helping me develop questions of my own.
I was looking at the map of Germany and I noticed the flu really spiked up between January to mid February and then drastically dropped. I also noticed that the most flu cases were shown around the edge of Germany and not so much in the middle. Another place I looked at was Canada and I saw most of the country doesn't suffer from the flu but the parts that do are extremely high. I also thought it was weird that the cases of flu has shot up at least two months before it normally does. I wonder what could be causing this? I took a look at the map of the U.S. and WOW we have a lot more flu cases than everyone else and it's spread about evenly through our entire country (even Alaska and Hawaii). I saw that just like Canada that the U.S.'s flu cases has shot up to a height we don't normally see and about 4 months before we normally see it rise. On the main map I saw that North America has a high amount of flu cases along with Japan and Hungary. I wonder why Flu cases haven't spiked in Europe even though they're more populated than North America? I wonder what the map would look like if the people in places were they can't get to a computer would look like if they could? All together I think this was really interesting and it had a lot of data to look at. I really enjoyed this activity!
I first focused on Australia Which confused me a little. I couldn’t figure out why during Jan., Feb., and March the flu trends over all were minimum. Then I realized why. It was because it was summer time and them being in the southern hemisphere they are just starting spring there. For them the highest flu times were during July. Then I went to America to see what we were acting like. The biggest surprise to me is Idaho having a intense area. Currently they are at intense which might be from being in the mountains during the winter good provide a higher risk. Overall America is between intense and high. I wonder what’s going to happen over the winter and about swine flu. one major thing for me is that the Mexico America boder is at a intense which might be from swine flu.
I find it interesting that Africa is not marked as having any flu trends at all. I would want to know how accurate this is; because I’m sure Africa has some areas that are affected by the flu. I would like to see this map with the whole world included, because if Africa didn’t have many people with the flu, why wouldn’t the map show the lightest shade of yellow instead of no color at all? I would also want to know more about the different amounts of flu in the separate states, I think it would be better if there was individual areas of color for each state, instead of a general color for the whole country. This way it would be easier to infer about where the flu was coming from in the first place. If we could see that there were a lot of flu cases in the west, and not as many in the east, we could infer about where the flu was spreading from in the west. I think this would be easier to interpret.
I noticed that the United States had the highest flu activity and the lowest was Australia, and Poland, . When I looked at the map of the U.S I saw that the "intense" flu activity was mostly all in the states with the lower populations. I think this is because all of the states that have lower populations have people in a few towns, so when one town gets the flu, it's the majority population of the whole state. The states that have a higher population such as California or New York don't have as much flu activity because people are all scattered across the state, and when areas get it, it's only a small portion of the state.
Another thing that I found interesting with these flu trends is that Mexico barely had any flu activities. I found that odd because that's where the flu came from. My guess is that the still have it in some places but they passed it on to the U.S.
I also noticed how the countries above the equator are the ones that have the flu mostly. At least the countries that are on the scale. That brings me to wonder what the white parts of the world mean. Do they not have any flu activity?
After I thought about that, it made me think about why Africa didn't have any flu activities or anything marked, I would think Africa would be one of the higher countries with the flu because they have so many diseases there.
I noticed, that there were, countries, who's stats that were not there, in the map they are present, but you don't get any stats on those countries.
But I knew, that some of the countries which have no stats, on there were infected with flu.
It's very interesting that, certain countries have a lot more people with flu than the rest, countries, like the U.S. and Canada, Hungary and Japan are examples of this.
Hungary is in Europe, where most of the other counties are all infected with mild to low flu, and then Hungary, which not a place you would expect to find flu, is high on the scale, which really seemed weird.
I think it would've been nice if google displayed info of other countries. There are a lot of important countries that they missed, places like India and China, and it really makes me wonder why google didn't put that up.
When I was looking deeper into the map, I noticed that the mid west states, were intense with the flu. I'm not sure weather there is a connection between the infected states; such what they mainly eat, or what work they do, such as farming and stuff.
Hawaii was the only state in the U.S. that wasn't affected by much due to the flu, it remains at low , but it's not connected to the mainland.
Australia, is remaining at minimal, but New Zealand which is really close is at low. At first I thought that islands are more isolated which is why they are low in flu when compared to other countries, but after looking at Japan, I eliminated that hypothesis.
Then I looked for things in common with the islands and places that didn't have much flu, I thought that maybe the more people that that live the in a concentrated area, the more flu they have, because the flu can easily spread.
I researched the parts of Australia online, and tried to figure out which areas contained a lot of cities or had high populations, to see if that corresponds with the map of Australia on flu trends. However, it turned out that the states in which had big cities, were lime green (Minimal flu activity) and the states with no big cities were yellow (Low flu activity), and one state had no stats. This really surprised me!
First of all, my hypothesis that the more populated areas like cities an area has, the more flu it will get because the virus could spread, but also because the more people are there to use the internet; was proven incorrect, because the states on the west had more flu activity.
Number two, because it started to intrigue even more that one state had no stats.
After doing all this, I was still not willing to give up, I looked at I believe, every single country and saw at what months the flu was the highest, and usually in most countries (Of the ones on the map with had stats.) I noticed that as time progressed, so did the amount of flu activity. Of course there were a few exceptions, some countries had more flu activity near the september time period, while australia, hit it's peak a long time ago and drastically decreased now. I don't know why this is, it may be because of the temperature, or species and many other ecological differences and similarities, but you can't be sure of anything unless you do a lot of research and experiments.
I think the google flu trends was useful, not because it contained a lot of info (which it didn't :( ... )
But because that it got me really thinking and also made me more aware of my surroundings.
I studied the flu trends in Russia. From the map you can tell that the flu’s occurrence is moderate. This was pretty predictable to me for a few reasons. One reason is that Russia has some big cities like Moscow that will have the flu in them. Since Russia is so widespread, you wouldn’t expect someone to get it in the less populated areas. The odds of someone going to a rural area in Russia from North America is slim. (because it started in Canada) If you were to average the farmland and cities together, you’d get moderate. I noticed how the flu has gotten more common in September and October so far. I was wondering if that was connected to school starting, so I did some research and found that A lot of schools start on September 1st. Knowing this, you can conclude that when kids come back to school from the summer, Germs are spread. I also noticed that so far this year, the likelihood of the flu is higher than predicted, and maybe this year will be worse flu wise, then expected. The graph shows the occurrences going slightly up during September, and staying straight until January. That is when it shoots up, and is predicted to peak by late February. The flu is expected to occur more during the winter because many people are forced inside in smaller spaces instead of being outside. I compared this data to that of North America. Like Mexico, Russia received the disease from somewhere else. Now that some countries are just experiencing it for the first time, Mexico is feeling some relief compared to other countries.
I found alot of things surprising with this map. I was surprised at how high the intensity of the flu is in America, compared to the low intensity in Mexico. It apparently started in Mexico (although some believe it originiated in America), so why is it not as intense there. Could it be because there are so many more people closer together in America? Another thing that confused me, is how the high intensity just kind of skips Africa, and is high in Alaska again. Is it because more Americans go to Alaska than to canada? I also found that the southern states had the highest intensity. I wonder why this is? I'm also surprised that it isn't as high in New York, because of how many people live here, and how close the people are in NYC, also with all the public transportation, it would be a fast way to spread germs. Another question I have is what do the white countries mean? Is that unknown as of now, or is the flu almost non-existant in those regions. I find it hard to believe that there would be no activity in China, or Japan because of all those really highly populated cities. Although the Google Flu Trends gave some informations, it ended up leaving me with more questions than answers.
When I was exploring Google flu trends I noticed that most of the high connotation of flu was motley in groups of country. Like the Mexico the US and Canada all have some level of flu searches. I liked how you could make the time line some two years side by side and see that little bar at the bottom that shoed you the same information but looked like a calendar. I also enjoyed haw you can click on a country and then zoom into smaller sections of that country.
I was looking at the map and saw the countries that were weight so they had no people that searched flu symptoms on the internet. I thought for a second and notes that most of the countries that didn’t have any color were third word countries that didn’t have internet or electricity so they couldn’t search flu symptoms on the internet. There for the information isn’t completely accurate.
I noticed that in the more populated countries and states, there was more swine flu, but also, some flat land had high levels of it too, like Idaho, and North Dakota. Also, hot areas, like Texas, Newmexico, and Arizona seem to have high consentrations of the H1N1 flu.
My hypothesis is that in North Dakota and Idaho, not very populated places, think that the flu only happens where there is lots of prople, and that they don't have to worry about it. But in the cities, people are being careful, but there are so many people, that it is hard to control. I noticed that in cold places, like Switzerland, there was almost no flu activity. This makes me think that the flu has a heat resistance, and cold is not it's optimal condidtion. I wonder what the optimal conditions for the Swine Flu are?
Something that I found that was interesting was the fact that even though the swine flu started in Mexico there is a low amount of people have the flu compared to a high amounts of people who have it in the U.S.A. I was shocked to learn that Hawaii and Maine have the least amount of swine flu patients. While Idaho and Oregon have the highest amounts. I was also shocked at the amounts of swine flu patients in Australia, in the past years Australia has had a higher rate of normal flu patients. America has the highest rate with Australia at the lowest.
I chose to study the flu trends in the United States further and this is what I found out:
United States (national):
I found it interesting that this is the first year (2009-2010) that the flu is intense in October. In the year before (2008-2009) and two years before (2007-2008) the flu was its strongest in February. In the year 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 the flu was very subtle and not intense or high at all. In 2004-2005 though, it was high in February once again.
United States (New York):
In New York the flu trends for this year are the same as the over all national flu trends; intense in October and September and minimal in the summer. In the year before (2008-2009) the flu trends were high in February and March and the year before that (2007-2008) it was low for the entire year. It stayed low for the next two following years 2006-2007 and 2005-2006. Although, in 2004-2005 the flu was intense in both January and February, yet minimal for the fall and summer.
It’s strange that the flu trends were low in autumn in the past 5 years nationally, but high in the fall of this year. I’d like to see how long it will last this season.
Google Flu Maps
• In Norway, the flu activity increased during August and September. Now the flu activity there has decreased
• New York has high flu activity
• The United States either has moderate, high or intense
• Most of the states in the United States are high
• Ohio, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, West Virginia, Oregon, Arizona, and New Mexico all have high Flu Activity
• Canada has high flu activity
• Hungary has high flu activity
• Sweden, Norway, Spain, France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Poland, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Australia, and Russia all either have moderate or low flu activity
• Japan has high flu activity
• New Zealand has low flu activity
• The United States has the highest flu level
• Baja California is the only place in Mexico that has Moderate flu level
• In July, Japan’s flu activity was low, now it is increasing
• In France, the flu activity was high/moderate in September, now it is decreasing
• All of Canada is either high or moderate
• July and August, the flu level was low, now it is increasing
• July through September, flu activity was high in Norway, now it is going down
• August through September, flu activity was very high in Sweden. Now it is moderate
• Switzerland has stayed low or minimal since July
I think that the temperature of the country has something to do with the flu activity. For example, in the United States in July and August, the flu activity was low. Now it is very high in the U.S. Also in Canada it was low/moderate in July and August, and now it is also increasing. On the other side of the world (in Norway) the flu was low for part of July and then it got very high through September. Now it is decreasing. In New Zealand June through September was high. It is also decreasing. I think it also has to do with were you are in the world, what side of the equator you are on, and the temperature.
I noticed that Africa, South America, Greenland, and parts of Asia weren’t even affected by the flu at all! I was really surprised that it wasn’t even low or minimal. I am wondering why they aren’t affected by the flu?
I think that the U.S. is very affected by the flu because people are very close together (like in NYC) and because the U.S. is very populated. Because of this, germs can spread easier. Last year in the United States, the flu wasn’t as high as it is now. It was only moderate in 2007-2008. Many other countries are not has high as the U.S and Canada. Canada is also very high (not as high as the U.S.). Japan’s flu activity is also high. I think maybe because there are also big cities and lots of people (just like the United States). I think certain countries are worse than others because if there was a new out break, people’s bodies may not be used to a virus like that. It would take some time before they could adapt to that. For example, when you go to some countries, you need to get shots before you go. You do that because there are certain diseases there that your body is not used to. People who live there have adapted to it.
One thing i found out was, Each week millions of people around the world search for health information online. I also learned what health information is searched really depends on what season it is. For example in flu season more people search for flu related health help.
I also learned that in the time span of 2004-2008 the influenza estimate decreased then rose again in 2008. And i found out that the graphs on the website show historical query-based flu estimates for different countries and regions. In Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico, Idaho, Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio all have intense flu activity.
I noticed that the flu activity in the United States is VERY high. In the news you would hear a lot about Mexico, but the United States is really bad. Mexico's flu activity never got past moderate, yet some places in the U.S. are all the way up at intense. I also noticed that most of the countries activity levels built up between June-October. I find that kind of strange that it's basically all happening between those months. There wasn't too much build up any other time which is kind of interesting. In the past years build up occurred during sometime around February. You would think that pattern would continue, but it doesn't. So now I'm wondering what's causing the break in the pattern. This pattern doesn't only apply to the U.S., but most other countries as well. It's also kind of scary how fast it's building up. Just a few months? That seems pretty quick to me.
What I noticed was that most of the countries below the equator were not colored at all which means they did not have any flu activity. I find that strange because how can a flu plague end right at the boarder of a country or almost exactly where the equator is? I would like to know more about this. What I thought was really odd is how the flu spread down to Australia when it’s so far from any other country with flu activity. I also noticed that Mexico had less flu activity then a lot of countries and I think that’s interesting because I heard that that is where the flu had originated from.
Something I think they should change was that on the world map each country had a solid flu rating over the whole country but when I clicked on a country it zoomed in and I saw that there were parts of the country that had higher flu activity then others and some lower. I think they should put this detail on the world map also.
•Most of the countries with flu problems are towards the north
•Toward the north west is where there is more cases of the flu
•Many European countries have low flu levels
•Southern states in the US have very high flu levels
•Canada has mostly moderate flu activity
•In September flu outbreaks have gone much higher
I find it interesting how many countries have gotten the flu in such mass quantities. But I also think that we are blowing this out of proportion a little. I realize how serious this is but I mean we have a cure for it; we have a vaccination for it. If you can’t get the attention you need or can’t afford it then you have a problem but all of these countries have medical plans and hospitals. I do believe that we need to do something about it but have everyone going around in fear of flu/swine flu
When I explored the Google Flu Trends chart I was surprised to see that Europe had only moderate activity. It is just that Europe is bigger than the USA but it has only moderate activity when some parts of the United States have intense activity. In Europe in 2006-2009 during the end of February there is a high activity group. I wonder why it is alway around that time. Since the year has not passed that time period no one will know for sure if the trend will continue.
I thought it was really interesting that even though New Zealand and Austrailia, even though they are close and Austrailia is bigger, New Zealand has a higher flu rate. Also, I noticed that in America the flu rate is so high that the range of the flu trends starts at a low of MODERATE and goes up to INTENSE.
Most flu activity is in the northern hemisphere
there is no flu activity in South America
there is no flu activity in Africa
the only places below the equator with any flu activity are Australia and New Zealand.
There are 7 states in the U.S. with intense flu activity.
There are no states in the U.S. With below moderate flu activity.
There are only 5 states with moderate flu activity the rest are higher.
New York has high flu activity.
North America is most affected by the flu.
Japan has high flu activity
New York is at the bottom of the high zone
Idaho is at the top of the intense zone.
Russia is near the bottom of the moderate zone and no regions or places in Russia are shown.
While looking at the flu trends i noticed tons of interesting things. i decided to focus on the U.S's flu trends to see which states seem to have more flu outbreaks then others. just about 80% of the states flu trends were inclining, but a few were declining. i'm not really sure why because they weren't all in the same area of the country, so i couldn't find an explanation for that.
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