Monday, October 22, 2012

WiFi density as an Economic Indicator

It's interesting that the neighborhoods with known lower income families have far less wifi access point density - the South West corner of the KC metro area is very high income and is nearly full, while the North East corner and North West corner of the KC metro area are lower income.


I'm sure someone with more time on thier hands could pull down the datasets and create a statistical correlation between income level and wifi access point density. 

Suprisingly as you zoom in the 'Leawood Hills' neighborhood in Johnson County is nearly blank, but the income levels there are off the charts.  Perhaps another statistical correlation - that's a lot of old folks living there who haven't caught up with technology yet.  Neighborhood age vs wifi denisty?

Or, since most of the data has been obtained by 'war driving' (driving around with a specific piece of software marking down the GPS location of each WiFi access point), perhaps that's a gated community with no access for the war drivers.

It's not 100% accurate - it has my neighbor, Flip, with his access point nearly a half a block away.  Mine is recorded twice  about 50 yards apart.

anyway...

(data and map from http://wigle.net/ )


anyway...

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