A Day in the Life of Americans
December 16, 2015 8:25 AM Subscribe
The feeling of drifting slowly through a field of moving vehicles. / This was the REAL speed - the speed of business. / Not the numbers on the speedometer.
--The Sound of Business, David Byrne, The Knee Plays (1985)
(composed for Robert Wilson's opera the CIVIL warS: a tree is best measured when it is down)
posted by lazycomputerkids at 8:53 AM on December 16, 2015 [2 favorites]
--The Sound of Business, David Byrne, The Knee Plays (1985)
(composed for Robert Wilson's opera the CIVIL warS: a tree is best measured when it is down)
posted by lazycomputerkids at 8:53 AM on December 16, 2015 [2 favorites]
Thanks for this! As a social scientist, this is a really inspiring vision of how good data visualization can be in our field. I wish there was an easy way to generate these (the agent-based models I understand, the cool graphics, not so much).
posted by blahblahblah at 8:55 AM on December 16, 2015
posted by blahblahblah at 8:55 AM on December 16, 2015
Not that it's any of my business, but don't colored dots have sex? If not, how do they make more colored dots? Maybe that's why there are only a thousand of them.
posted by vverse23 at 9:17 AM on December 16, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by vverse23 at 9:17 AM on December 16, 2015 [4 favorites]
I wonder if leisure is a euphemism for sex, because there seems to be a significant amount of it going on in the very early morning hours....
posted by Chrischris at 9:20 AM on December 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Chrischris at 9:20 AM on December 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
cool, but if it's based on transition probabilities then does error accumulate over time? if you leave it running long enough, it seems like it should drift, right? i guess i need to leave my web page open for a few days and see what happens.
also, the physics of the little blobs is really cute, but it doesn't make sense for someone to be "trapped" in an activity they are not actually doing.
posted by andrewcooke at 9:24 AM on December 16, 2015 [3 favorites]
also, the physics of the little blobs is really cute, but it doesn't make sense for someone to be "trapped" in an activity they are not actually doing.
posted by andrewcooke at 9:24 AM on December 16, 2015 [3 favorites]
A day in my life indeed. I went from work to leisure with such sudden ferocity that several of my coworkers got blasted into housework and two of them ended up in education.
posted by rlk at 9:28 AM on December 16, 2015 [14 favorites]
posted by rlk at 9:28 AM on December 16, 2015 [14 favorites]
Chrischris: you will see that in the Sleeping area, during the night, people keep turning blue, which is the color of Leisure. While I'm not sure, I suspect that this implies hanky and/or panky.
The one that was weirdest to me is that religion gets like 3-4% during the morning hours. Does that represent morning Mass at Catholic churches? If so it's quite well attended.
posted by graymouser at 9:38 AM on December 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
The one that was weirdest to me is that religion gets like 3-4% during the morning hours. Does that represent morning Mass at Catholic churches? If so it's quite well attended.
posted by graymouser at 9:38 AM on December 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
I wonder if leisure is a euphemism for sex, because there seems to be a significant amount of it going on in the very early morning hours....
Well, when I woke up at 5 am this morning I spent an hourdicking around on the internet catching up on the news before I hopped in the shower. A lot of early risers like to relax before they get started on their day.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 9:39 AM on December 16, 2015 [5 favorites]
Well, when I woke up at 5 am this morning I spent an hour
posted by Elementary Penguin at 9:39 AM on December 16, 2015 [5 favorites]
The one that was weirdest to me is that religion gets like 3-4% during the morning hours. Does that represent morning Mass at Catholic churches? If so it's quite well attended.
Morning mass, morning prayers in a lot of religions, a lot of people meditate when they first wake up. If you're going to fit religion into a workday you're more likely to do it before work than after work.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 9:40 AM on December 16, 2015
Morning mass, morning prayers in a lot of religions, a lot of people meditate when they first wake up. If you're going to fit religion into a workday you're more likely to do it before work than after work.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 9:40 AM on December 16, 2015
but it doesn't make sense for someone to be "trapped" in an activity they are not actually doing.
I'm just assuming the people in the "work" area who are coloured for "leisure" are surfing Metafilter from the office.
posted by nubs at 10:05 AM on December 16, 2015 [5 favorites]
I'm just assuming the people in the "work" area who are coloured for "leisure" are surfing Metafilter from the office.
posted by nubs at 10:05 AM on December 16, 2015 [5 favorites]
also, the physics of the little blobs is really cute, but it doesn't make sense for someone to be "trapped" in an activity they are not actually doing.
Friday afternoons at the office.
posted by Celsius1414 at 10:05 AM on December 16, 2015 [6 favorites]
Friday afternoons at the office.
posted by Celsius1414 at 10:05 AM on December 16, 2015 [6 favorites]
Woot! Love seeing this posted to metafilter. The ATUS extract builder used to build the visualization is, in part, built and maintained by mefi's own me!
ATUS is a fascinating survey, so much interesting information in there. I went to an ATUS talk last week on time spent with spouses and children between genders/over time/across age demographics/across countries. You couldn't do that kind of research effectively without ATUS*.
* reason 1,000,000 not to vote GOP, the Bureau of Labor Statistics budget would get hammered by any one of those yahoos.
posted by mcstayinskool at 10:43 AM on December 16, 2015 [7 favorites]
ATUS is a fascinating survey, so much interesting information in there. I went to an ATUS talk last week on time spent with spouses and children between genders/over time/across age demographics/across countries. You couldn't do that kind of research effectively without ATUS*.
* reason 1,000,000 not to vote GOP, the Bureau of Labor Statistics budget would get hammered by any one of those yahoos.
posted by mcstayinskool at 10:43 AM on December 16, 2015 [7 favorites]
I'm pretty sure the reason colored dots are "trapped" in a bigger blob is an artifact of the physical simulation. The dots have collision detection and are constantly forcing their way towards a central point corresponding to the other activity - if one in the middle of a big sleeping blob is selected to transfer from sleeping to leisure, for example, the other sleeping dots crowd it and prevent it from escaping.
posted by xthlc at 10:44 AM on December 16, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by xthlc at 10:44 AM on December 16, 2015 [2 favorites]
This is really, really interesting! Thanks for posting it!
posted by ApathyGirl at 11:39 AM on December 16, 2015
posted by ApathyGirl at 11:39 AM on December 16, 2015
That's really neat! What a great way to visualize what the population is up to.
posted by ph00dz at 12:27 PM on December 16, 2015
posted by ph00dz at 12:27 PM on December 16, 2015
other sleeping dots crowd it and prevent it from escaping
Same. When my wife and the cats are still sleeping and I have to get up it is damn hard to escape.
posted by Rock Steady at 12:46 PM on December 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
Same. When my wife and the cats are still sleeping and I have to get up it is damn hard to escape.
posted by Rock Steady at 12:46 PM on December 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
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"Please, Dad, we call them Simulated Americans now."
posted by Horace Rumpole at 8:53 AM on December 16, 2015 [8 favorites]