Woodhead Index and the Iraqui War

Google has provided me another way to search the world's information (that's their mission statement). In this case it's the intelligence of US citizens. Google Insights allows you to see which regions or cities are doing the most searches for any given phrase. See who's doing the most searches for misspelled words and you can pinpoint "woodhead clusters".

The problem is that it ranks by volume of searches so big cities will always dominate (even if they are not woodheads). I control for this by looking for differences between the city rankings for popular search terms and the misspellings. Sadly, "myspace" is apparently the most commonly searched term on Google so that is what I used to indicate "normal" intelligence.

One insightful result is that Washington was one of the few major anomalous cities to stand out in a search of "Iraqui":

vs. "myspace":

Woodheads are a significant factor in urban economic research so I am glad to make my small contribution.

Forbes Writer Gets Creative

I like this title a Forbes writer came up with: Natural Gas: Booming In The Beltway

Forbes = elementary school potty jokes