Want to predict where the flu will hit next? Check OpenTable.
Epidemiologists are big fans of the internet - everything from Twitter to Google searches are fodder for tracking the path of disease epidemics in real time as they occur. Here, the researchers took a related approach: using OpenTable as a proxy for disease incidence. The idea is that when the flu season peaks, there will be an increase in available reservations at restaurants (people with the flu are usually too sick to go out to dinner). Indeed, they found some significant correlations bet