Visual Map of US LW-ers
Earlier this month, Metus did a post asking for LW-ers locations. I thought it would even more useful to have this information in visual format, so I created a Google map. You can access it on the website below. Unfortunately, I am terrible at this post-writing interface, so I can’t get the image of the map to load onto here. You’ll have to click the link to view it.
Original Post: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/8sm/where_do_you_live_meetup_planners_want_to_know/
(If you haven’t filled out the poll yet, please do it! If more people submit their location info, I’ll add them to the map.)
These are only for US locations that had a 5-digit zip-code, or a city name. I may or may not map the other countries. If someone else wants to volunteer, send me a message, and I’ll add you as a collaborator to the map, so you can edit.
In the vein of keeping it updated, it will be difficult if people move. I’ll be moving after I graduate at the end of this year, and the Knoxville entry will be gone.
Sadly, it doesn’t look like there’s any chance of a TN meetup starting anytime soon anyway...
Would there be a way to get the “location” information people put into their profiles automatically parsed into a Google map like this?
.>In the vein of keeping it updated, it will be difficult if people move. I’ll be moving after I graduate at the end of this year, and the Knoxville entry will be gone.
Send me a message when you move, and I will update your dot.
I’m sure there is, but I can’t do it. If there are any GIS people here, I bet they have/know of a program that can do it.
Google maps disappointed me in that it doesn’t have an option to jitter the data points at all. (but it’s free! so....) There are some places that have people right on top of each other (like New York or CA), and you can’t tell until you zoom pretty far in on them. I’m sure someone here knows of a better tool, if they’d like to volunteer.
Also...Thank you to whichever mod fixed the link in my post. Much appreciated!
I know of several programs that can query a database in real time (eg, Tableau), but am not aware of any free versions. Given a database of US zipcodes and their coordinates and a database of LW poll responses, I’m sure it would be trivial for me to write a program that makes a list of occupied zipcodes, their locations, and how many people are at each one. Presumably then it would be possible to draw a map or feed the data to Google Maps...I’m not much of a hand at web stuff so I’m not sure about that.
You can make feed Google Maps a set of latitude/longitude points trivially using KML. Just type the URL of your KML file into the search field on google maps, and it’ll show up.
To geocode zip codes (convert them to lat/lon pairs), you can hit http://geocoder.us/service/csv/geocode?zip=95472
SOME RANDOM CONCLUSIONS
145 people responded to the location poll so far, and of those about 100 were from the US. In comparison, 1090 people responded to “The” Survey this year, with about 520 of them being actual posters on LW (having karma).
Unsurprisingly, the San Francisco area had by far the greatest number of respondents, at 11.
One big surprise for me was Cincinnati, which had 4 respondents. I highly encourage a Cincinnatian to have a meet-up.
Cities with 3 respondents include: San Diego, Salt Lake City, Denver, Chicago, Detroit / Ann Arbor, and Washington DC.
The north Eastern seaboard has a pretty concentrated stripe of responders from Washington to Boston.
I feel sorry for the most isolated responder in Kalispell, MT, who lives 8 hours and 41 minutes from their closest LW neighbor.
New York surprised me by only having 2 respondents. I think the most likely theory is that people from already active LW areas such as NYC, or other areas that already have meetups, are less likely to fill out the survey. People who were looking for meetups, or to find others nearby, were more likely to fill it out.
In other words, people from places like NYC don’t NEED to fill out the survey in order to find others nearby, whereas people from Nowheresville do.
I am very happy to see that the data collected so far has been visualized. Sadly, as mentioned in an other comment, once the posts will be pushed off the first page they will quickly forgotten.
Perhaps a monthly comment in an open thread, or something on the Welcome to LW thread would be a good idea.
Or a permanent link somewhere, some kind of “where are we?” button.
If this was turned into a permanent link, I think it might be worthwhile to start over with a poll that leaves the option of putting your LW name attached to your location.
Even better, if you could hover over/click on a plot point, and have their name pop up.
For example, instead of just knowing that there are 2 people located within driving distance, you could know that Person A and Person B were within driving distance.
Even better would be to have the option to attach a zipcode to your account, so that people can check where you live, and so that you can manage your information easily if you change locations (or want to obfuscate your location by repeatedly altering it, since I know some people will want to do that). Additionally this would allow implementation of location-specific actions (eg, you get an email if a nearby meetup is announced), which could be very convenient.
Under ‘Preferences’, you can enter a location on your profile, so you could put your zipcode there (I just did). The downside is that this isn’t searchable, so it’d be hard to compile location-specific e-mail lists from that. Another option is to create a Wiki page with the usernames and zipcodes of anyone who’d like to disclose them—that way, you’d just need to PM the relevant people to get e-mail addresses to start an e-mail group.
This is a great idea!
But I am wary of anything that involves too much work changing the LW website. Mainly because, as far as I can tell, except for minor fixes, no one’s really bothered getting the LW interface to a decent standard. People are happy to suggest changes, but very few are willing or able to implement them.
In reality, though, IMO It really needs a complete overhaul, but I doubt anyone is going to take on the responsibility. (If anyone DOES want to, let me know. My graduate studies were in interface design and usability, and I’d be happy to help with the layout and navigation. I just can’t do the actual work of coding and developing and all the useful stuff)
In other words, great idea, but I doubt it will ever get done. (But I;m upvoting the idea anyways, because I hope it does!)
I’m 22030, and answered the poll (late), but am not yet on the map.
I’m U.S., 20850
Will you keep this updated?
I’m USA: 94704.
I would, but I don’t know how that would work.
My original plan was to check the original survey in a week, to see if anyone else added their info. There might be some then, but I’m fairly certain that once this post also gets pushed off the front page that there won’t be any more updates. Or if there were, they’d be extremely infrequent.
I suppose I could make a meta-comment for people to post in if they added their info, so I’d get a message in my inbox if there were updates, but again...Once this discussion is off the main page, I doubt it will get any more contact infos.
added!
.
Ah, thank you! I was wondering why people were entering in 4 digit numbers that didn’t map to anything. (The best theory I had was that people were idiots. Your answer is SO much better!)
I have added all the 4 digit “zip codes” with zeros in front, and while I was at it I updated everyone who has answered the survey as of now (2pm EST, 12/20/11). Thank you to everyone who has contributed their information!