Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Boeing 787 and the iPhone 3GS


The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner is a superefficient airplane with new passenger-pleasing features. It will bring the economics of large jet transports to the middle of the market, using 20 percent less fuel than any other airplane of its size. The specs for the lower deck of the 787 suggest a capacity of 4400 cubic feet. The iPhone 3GS has a volume of 5.184 cubic inches and a weight of 4.8 ounces (i.e., 27.778 iPhones/cubic foot), thus it is possible for the 787 to carry as many as 122,000 iPhones. Interestingly, the iPhone is less dense than freshly fallen snow, which weighs in at 10 lbs per cubic foot.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Tour de France - Predictions After the First Rest Day


General Classification
1st - Alberto Contador
2nd - Lance Armstrong
3rd - Andy Schleck

King of the Mountains
1st - Egoi Martinez
2nd - Franco Pellizotti
3rd - David Moncoutie

Points Classification
1st - Thor Hushovd
2nd - Mark Cavendish
3rd - Oscar Friere

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Evacuation Patterns - Hurricane Katrina


I'm helping colleagues on a project that surveyed residents about their evacuation plans in the face of another large hurricane. Using a combination of PHP and Google Maps, I was able to plot the locations of survey respondents and one of the hypothetical tracks used in the survey. The underlying data is being used to analyze factors that might affect evacuation patterns. One of those factors is a distance-based measure: the distance from landfall, and the distance from the track itself. Preliminary analysis suggests that distance to landfall is a significant factor, yet distance to track is not.