Three unusual features in new search results format

I’ve been a little distracted by various client issues, but I’m pretty sure that all of these elements together, are a new feature. Try “super bowl 2011″ and see what you get. Credit to Kim Clinkunbroomer (MrsC), AdWords Help Forum Top Contributor, for spotting this and drawing my attention to it.

You knew there was a “but” coming, didn’t you?

The UK, where I live, is shown as appearing to have the lowest possible activity. When I look at the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) for their analysis of the 2009 swine flu outbreak, the UK has a medium incidence of Swine Flu and a high incidence of fatalities.

So how does one source show us as essentially free from Swine Flu and one show us severely affected, as severely as Swine Flu goes? What have I misunderstood?

I’m guessing that the apparent mismatch is probably caused by the way that data is collected and presented. Instead of showing a colour that looks like the lowest incidence, it should be showing a colour that indicates “insufficient data collected”, explicitly called out in the colour key. Now, using an explicitly named colour for insufficient data is probably not desirable for several reasons. The Google Swine Flu monitor is only tracking 20 countries (up from 16 a few weeks ago). That’d make the bulk of the map into “no data”. Doesn’t look good to show that the majority of countries aren’t covered, especially the huge populations of China and India.

But showing where there is a lack of data is more useful for casual viewers than the implication that most of the world is unaffected. It’s really the old scientific dictum:

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence

Google’s map confuses a low incidence with lack of measurement, breaking that basic rule and resulting in a misleading world view that only a few countries are affected. I don’t think it’s intentional, I think it’s just that the focus of thought went into the place for which data was being shown, and the implication for the casual browser wasn’t considered. Or perhaps I’m just picky about data presentation.

So Why Is the UK Not Shown?

I’m wondering whether the lack of data is caused by our National Health Service, and particularly by NHS Direct – a free phone service that gives you access to an escalation chain from call centre to nurse to doctor. If queries about swine flu are being directed as queries for NHS Direct, then there could be a low signal for swine flu queries.

Where Next?

The other thing I’d love to see, is a progress chart, showing the historical evolution of the interest levels, ideally down to province or even town level. I know that’d be a lot of work to do, though! There are suggestions in the site that this is under way, though – and the link with early warning of disease spread is really interesting use of search data.

Kudos to the team that developed this, and as this kind of work progresses I’ll be looking forwards to seeing better presentation of the data and some deeper insights.

Quite interesting to see their designs for a lower energy long haul passenger aircraft. Flies at 90% the speed of current long haul planes, uses composites to reduce weight and they are reworking engine mounting systems to provide the best compromise between noise reduction, drag, and safety. I don’t mind taking an hour longer to reach LAX – going from a 10 to 11 hour flight to a 11 to 12 hour flight isn’t that big a deal. Besides, the last time I flew there, it took over three hours from starting the checkin queue to boarding, and three hours from disembarking to get past immigration, so if there were serious concerns about delays, there’s a lot of other parts of the journey where time could be shaved!

I was a little concerned about composites – having read some New Scientist articles over the years about delaminating composites and the difficulty of detecting delamination. One of the lecturers told me about new techniques that prevent or slow the spread of delamination, basically little pegs that cross the layers.

This view looks out over the field to the southwest of the house. The far line of trees, on the near horizon, marks the normal far edge of the river, which is usually about 10 to 20 metres (30 to 60 feet) wide. The visible water here averages about 1 metre (3 feet) deep, across a field that normally grazes about 300 sheep.

At 15:00, the river was 200 metres away (600 feet) and had started to creep over the bank. It is rising at about 4 cm (one and a half inches) per hour, over the last hour, across about 400 metres at present (about 1200 feet). That puts it about 20 to 40 hours from the house…

Sometimes you have to go with the flow. We’re packing now. The floods in 2003 came to the bottom of the garden, where this was taken. The waters are rising faster now, than they did back then. According to the sheep farmer, our house was above the 1947 floods. Parts of the UK are seeing floods higher than anything in the last 200 years. Previously, it took several days to go from overflowing the banks to flooding the bottom of the garden.

Rain is expected tomorrow (Tuesday), here. Nothing is certain, but I’d rather get ready now and be wrong, than start a panic activity in the middle of the night. I’ll still forget crucial stuff, of course.

Wednesday, 25th

After a strange bounce, where the level dropped 10cm yesterday afternoon, and came back up to almost the maximum level for this morning, it’s now dropped almost a metre. I can see most of the field, or the grass, at least, above the water. I guess the rapid rise and rapid fall is a result of the way that the water arrived – a huge rainburst. Had the rain been more sustained, I suspect the rise and fall would have been longer, with farmland slowing the response of the river system. What’s intriguing is that we had two distinct rain pulses, but it looks like the river floods once – the short period rise wasn’t anywhere near enough, nor the time delay… If there is a second pulse, then it should arrive within the next 24 hours.

Thursday, 26th

The water level has dropped – no second surge. Whew. We’ve started moving everything back. There’s even sheep now grazing where there was flood water. The bridges that control one of the three access roads to the village were flooded for a day or so – fairly normal for flooding here. It makes for a detour of about six miles for most places outside the village.

The speed of both rise and fall are far greater than anything we’ve seen before. The rains we saw last week were quite intense, though not up to the vertical rivers that drenched us in Austin, Texas every so often. Though they might not have had the intensity of a Texan storm, they lasted longer. On the news we hear that unusual rainfall (or lack of it) are likely to become more common. Flood plains are going to be important for controlling water and helping direct it to longer term storage for periods of drought.

I guess we need to keep an active plan for flood preparedness, and generally keep a little more of our stuff out of reach of potential floods. And we need to keep an ear on the news for rains in the catchment area of the river basin. The Environment Agency website offers flood warnings and maps of where the flood levels will get to with severe flooding, but it doesn’t show the current situation – just the general risk. And the text based descriptions of the alerts don’t seem tied to the maps. So you don’t know whether the communities upstream are facing rapid severe floods or slowly rising moderate floods. It seems to take the water about two hours to reach us from Felmersham and about 12 to 18 hours from Newport Pagnell. By keeping an eye on what is happening there and calling some friends who live upstream, it’ll give us some better warning.

Panic over. Normal service will now be resumed.

First seriously cold morning this winter, I’m frozen

Yeah, these warm winters.

Could do with a good cold winter to kill the insect vectors of disease.

Sure could.

Apart from a University, where else do you get that kind of conversation?

Generally, I’m not personally in favour of CAPTCHA – it’s essentially an exercise in security through obscurity. That means it won’t be long before those who find it a problem (spiders and bots) get better software that removes the obscurity. Long in this context means weeks rather than years.

If you have to do it, this implementation seems pretty cute.

Update

John K pointed out the timescale of CAPTCHA obscurity. I radically reduced the estimated time to crack. Guess you need to be really obscure to be secure…