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Published online 19 November 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/456287a
Web data predict flu
Search engines provide information about epidemics.
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Scary stuff - an eye into the mind of the nation. I wonder if you can predict (or at least postdict) election results with this type of analysis, say from the relative frequencies of 'democrat' vs 'republican' or 'obama' vs 'mccain'.