I must be slightly confused about what claims this visualization is making. Are these 5 degree rays supposed to be indicating non-overlapping triangles where each triangle contains 100k population? If so, a full circle (with no triangles missing) would be a population of 7.2 million. And yet, clicking around Los Angeles County you can easily find multiple completely non-overlapping full circles, despite the county population being under 10 million.
That seems like the distance to go from having 100k people in front of you to having 100k people behind you. The distance you'd have to go to run into them properly would depend critically on the width of the vehicle you're in. With about 30k people running the Boston marathon and 60k people running the NY marathon, if you can source a vehicle wide enough to cover the course, it seems like you could pull it off in just a bit over 52.4 miles... assuming that the bodies didn't produce enough drag to slow you down so much that runners were managing to stay ahead of you on the course. (And assuming that marathon runners prioritize completion of the course over running sideways away from obvious danger, but they're marathon runners, that seems like a safe assumption.)
> That seems like the distance to go from having 100k people in front of you to having 100k people behind you
0 metres. Just turn round.
To pass within say 5m of someone you just need to set up shop at a busy train platform and wait. With 1000 people passing every 2 minutes it won’t take long to pass 100k (well presumably about 3 hours)
Ah interesting, I seen the title "run into" as "bump into" or in this context, get to where 100k people are. I don't know any US addresses far from population centers so I pumped in Area 51!
This is very cool - I really want to see it in other places outside of the US - I imagine the centre of Australia only has like 4 potential lines. Do you plan on expanding it beyond the US?
I've been building a UK-wide 24-hour population dataset lately, and it's really opened my eyes to how much population data is best-guess-estimate - including census figures - and quite how difficult it is to say with any certainly how many people "touched" a location on any given day.
Indeed, it doesn't seem to think that the fairly large cities of Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Winnipeg, and Thunder Bay have a population of approximately zero. Anywhere in northern Montana has the "beam" shoot all the way over to Maine before reaching 100K, which isn't quite right since it passes through a couple medium Canadian cities and dozens of prairie towns.
I think this tool would be much more interesting in the western US if they had incorporated Canadian census data as well.
It does say that it only works in contiguous US (so no Alaska nor Hawaii nor "abroad" :D ), but seems it also works in Bahamas, for some reason, which as far as I know, isn't part of the contiguous US (yet?).
Is this supposed to mean that 100k people live in each slice of the pie? Counting up slices and comparing to my metro statistical area population, that about works out.
I'm having a hard time finding any place that produces a ray longer than about 900 miles. I found a spot in NW South Dakota whose shortest rays are nearly 300 miles.
The longest single ray I've found is 1089 miles around El Paso, headed northwest. There ain't much out there as long as you dodge Flagstaff and southwestern Utah.
I don't fully understand what this is supposed to visualize, but at least for my location it tells me I'd have to run considerably far into golden gate park, which I imagine is negligible in terms of people.
This is really neat. Could this data be linked to quality of life indexes and see if there’s any correlation?
0 metres. Just turn round.
To pass within say 5m of someone you just need to set up shop at a busy train platform and wait. With 1000 people passing every 2 minutes it won’t take long to pass 100k (well presumably about 3 hours)
Clarity needed on the title or description!
> From the pin, a filled 5° slice in every direction. Petal length = distance to 100k people.
I've been building a UK-wide 24-hour population dataset lately, and it's really opened my eyes to how much population data is best-guess-estimate - including census figures - and quite how difficult it is to say with any certainly how many people "touched" a location on any given day.
This map pretty much proves it!
From Union Square, you'd need to scan the city plus the entire East Bay.
I think this tool would be much more interesting in the western US if they had incorporated Canadian census data as well.
Punched in my grandparents' town and a bunch of the slices stretched 1500km over three states away. A lot of the US is big and empty.