Do you know where you will be in a year at two in the afternoon? Microsoft Research yes

Adam Sadilek, from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Rochester, together with John Krumm, from Microsoft Research, have published a paper called Far Out: Predicting Long-Term Human Mobility, where they opens the possibility of being able to make long-term predictions of the mobility of people.

That is, being able to say with a high degree of certainty where we will be physically in six months or a year.

We are more predictable than we think

Both researchers carried out a study on 307 subjects and 396 vehicles, which were made to be permanently geo-located 24 hours a day by means of GPS devices, both while carrying them and in multiple places that could to visit.

Thus they stored more than 32,000 days of constant samples for an area of ​​about 10,000,000 m2. Obtaining sequences of between 7 and 1247 consecutive days of a single study individual.

To the surprise and joy of Adam and John, their methodology based on Fourier analysis that looks for periodic patterns in human mobility, and the application of the dimensional reduction technique called PCA, came to an unexpected conclusion: in the long term, we are not as unpredictable as we often think

Thus, with a sufficient volume of data, and with the appropriate treatment of the same, they verified that the majority of people follow repetitive patterns in our daily movements; that we only change a few times in life because of the most important events, such as a move, a change of work, a change of city, etc.

Although the researchers point out in the document that this study is the first of the investigation, and that it is barely the first draft; I believe without a doubt that it can represent a qualitative and quantitative leap in the services offered, consumed and in the future Information Society.

For example, this system could notify me that in 4 days there will be a hairdresser less than 100 meters away that will have an offer where I can save €5, or solve the typical problem of when? And where do the colleagues meet to see each other's faces?

And that without entering the world of .

Via | Fast Company