Phone Data Used to Map Human Activity

Researchers using mobile-phone data to study patterns of human movement find that we're quite creatures of habit, the BBC reports. The 100,000 randomly selected subjects—outside the US, where such tracking would be illegal, the AP notes—remained mostly in the same small area, traveling less than 6½ miles daily, with few going more than 50 miles on a regular basis.

Most surprising to the researchers is the fact that human movement overall adheres to a mathematical relationship known as a power law. That, combined with the regularity found in most people’s movements, opens up new possibilities for mathematical population modeling, which in turn could be used in preventing the spread of infectious diseases, such as avian flu. (More cell phones stories.)