Money Flow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeGIxR4Gduw&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Frocs.northwestern.edu%2Fprojects%2Fscaling_laws.html&feature=player_embedded

Professor Dirk Brockmann of Northwestern explains how money flow can link two cities and shows the network that can be created based on the flow of the dollar bill.

The money tracking website given in the video: http://www.wheresgeorge.com/. I was thinking of it before they even mentioned it. Of the 174 bills I've entered in it over time, some labeled and some not, I have a 4.02% hit rate. I wonder how much of Professor Brockmann's data is based on that website.

There is an inherent deficiency in the "Where's George" site in relation to social networking. For each dollar bill that is entered into the website, there are many missing links in the network from where it was printed to where it is now. Therefore the "betweenness" between the Government Mint and the current holder of the dollar bill is effectively unknown and will never be known.

Also, those that spend the most cash are typically those with the most disposable incomes (lower income bracket individuals). Those in lower income brackets may not have the resources or time available to enter their bills into "Where's George," therefore the majority of the traffic of the dollar bills are not recorded and those edges are lost and the links between nodes are effectively broken.