Area of Azeroth, More Conclusions

After the last sessions of analyzing the lengths of Azeroth, I still had no concrete values as to how big Azeroth really was in terms of its area. Proceeding from where I last left off on measuring the length of Azeroth, I took the pixel-length measurements and ran with them. From last time, I had determined that one pixel on the scale of the map I had been using at the time was .034706 kilometers to one side of a pixel. So, the area of one pixel should therefore be 0.0012045 kilometers². The next step was to remove the pixels from the map that weren’t navigable land or water, so basically just the oceans. This proved a bit trickier than it first appears, since the minimap has lots of different colored water and gradients to take out. Once that was done, the following outline emerged.

Google Trends

Or: Data Mining for Everybody

Stumbling through the internet today and trying some new things, I began to realize the power of Google Trends and what it’s capable of showing. The unique situation of Google as a search monopoly has given it the position to monitor what the majority of people are looking for on the internet at any given time. The Hot Trends page shows recent events with an almost stunning similarity to news feeds and blogs, although searches aren’t intended to reflect what’s the news. This might seem like old news, with things like NPR proclaiming the power of Google in detecting flu pandemics and the like, but it didn’t fully hit me from things like that that these tools aren’t just available to researchers, the Google Trends page allows anyone to compare the prevalence of a search. Setting out on my own scientific endeavor, I looked for what G. Trends would have to say about Cake vs. Pie.

(cake = red, pie = blue)