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Where's George? is a website that tracks the natural geographic circulation of American paper money. Its popularity has led to the establishment of a number of other currency tracking websites, sites that track other objects—such as used books—and it has been used in at least one research paper to provide statistical patterns of human travel in the United States.[1] As of November 18, 2009, Where's George? is tracking 162,097,761 bills totaling more than $878,038,826.[2]
[edit] OverviewThe site was established in December 1998 by Hank Eskin, a database consultant in Brookline, Massachusetts.[3] Where's George? refers to George Washington, whose portrait appears on the one-dollar bill. In addition to the one-dollar bill, 2-, 5-, 10-, 20-, 50- and 100-dollar denominations can be tracked. The one-dollar bill is by far the most popular denomination, followed by 20-dollar bills.[4] To track a bill, a user enters the local ZIP Code and the serial number and series of any United States denomination. International users are also able to participate using an extensive database of unique codes assigned to non-American/Canadian locations. Once a bill is registered, the site reports the time between sightings, the distance traveled between locations, and any comments from the finders (called "user notes"). The site does not track bills older than series 1963. Where's George? is supported by advertising, sales of memorabilia, and by users who pay a fee for extra features.[3] Users who pay a $7/month fee are entered into the "Friends of Where's George?" program, which allows these users to access the website free of advertisements; access certain features that others cannot, and refresh reports on the user's entered bills.[5] Eskin states that the "Friends of Where's George?" program will always be optional and payment to use the site will always be at the individual's prerogative.[5] [edit] HitsA hit is when a registered bill is re-entered into the database after its initial entry. Where's George? does not have specific goals other than tracking currency movements, but many users like to collect interesting patterns of hits, called bingos. The most common bingo involves getting at least one hit in all 50 states (called "50 State Bingo"). Another bingo, called FRB Bingo, is when a user gets hits on bills from all 12 Federal Reserve Banks.[6] Most bills do not receive any responses, or hits, but many bills receive two or more hits. The average hit rate is slightly over 11.1%. Double- and triple-hitters are common, and bills with 4 or 5 hits are not unheard of. Almost daily, a bill receives its 6th hit. The site record is held by a $1 bill with 15 entries.[7] To increase the chance of having a bill reported, users (called "Georgers") may write or stamp text on the bills encouraging bill finders to visit www.wheresgeorge.com and track the bill's travels.[3] Bills that are entered into the database, but not marked, are known as stealths. [edit] ControversyThe website does not encourage the defacement of U.S. Currency.[citation needed] In April 2000, it was investigated by the United States Secret Service, which informed the webmaster that the selling of "Where's George?" rubber stamps on the web site is considered "advertising" on United States currency, which is illegal under 18 U.S.C. § 475.[8] The website's administrators immediately ceased selling the rubber stamps and no further action against the site was taken.[3] At least one spokesperson for the US Secret Service has pointed out in print that marking US bills, even if not defacement, is still illegal for other reasons[9] under 18 U.S.C. § 475; however, the general view is that using Where's George? rubber stamps on currency is not illegal per se.[10] One Secret Service spokesman in Seattle, Washington, told The Seattle Times in 2004: "Quite frankly, we wouldn't spend too much looking into this."[3] [edit] Where's George? and geocaching The phenomenon of geocaching, in which small items are left in obscure places for others to find using GPS systems, has resulted in a problem. Some geocachers leave Where's George? bills, which can artificially inflate the number of hits for that bill and disrupt the intent of the site, to track money's natural movement. The Where's George? site says it "prohibits trading or exchanging bills with friends, family or anyone known to the bill distributor for the purpose of re-entry."[11][12] This rule is to encourage natural circulation of the currency, and to prevent multiple fake hits from happening on any bill. As a result, all bills containing the word "geocache" or "cache" are tagged as a geocache bill. The site has also dropped a separate listing of "Top 10 Geocache bills" and is cautioning that if geocache sites are used too often, "all Geocache bills will be removed from this site."[13] [edit] George ScoreThe "George Score" is a method of rating users based on how many bills they have entered and also by how many total hits they have had.[3] The formula is as follows: ![100\times\left[\sqrt{\ln({\rm bills\ entered})}+\ln({\rm hits}+1)\right]\times[1-({\rm days\ of\ inactivity}/100)]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/b/6/2/b62e7d70be985d88ab3ffe9b53a5ae5e.png) This logarithmic formula means that the more bills a user enters and the more hits the user receives, the less the user's score increases for each entered bill or new hit. Thus, a user's score does not increase as quickly when the user has entered many bills. The #1 user, Wattsburg Gary, has an unofficial George Score of 1,628.90 (as of November 16, 2009), and was the first user to break the 1500-George-Score mark and the one-million entered mark. Gary has entered over 1,376,000 bills.[14] Although there is a scoring system, the site makes it clear that this is not intended to be a contest. The site also prohibits marking bills and depositing them into financial institutions en masse.[11][15] [edit] CommunityWhere's George? includes a community of users that interact via forums. They are divided into several categories, ranging from regional to new-member-help threads. Some members of the site also participate in gatherings, held in various cities around the United States. Several of these gatherings have become annual events, and can vary widely in scope and size.[16] Released in 2006, the documentary film by Brian Galbreath named "WheresGeorge.com" serves as an insight into the hobby, hobbyists, and their get-togethers, which are known as "gatherings." The 27-minute color DVD features various interviews with "Georgers" at a Saint Louis, Missouri gathering, and with Hank Eskin (the creator of wheresgeorge.com); as well as narrated information and statistics about the site and culture. The film has aired on PBS affiliates WTTW and WSIU.[17] [edit] Use in researchAlthough Where's George? does not officially recognize the bills that travel the farthest or fastest, some have approached it as a semi-serious way to track patterns in the flow of American cash. Money flow displayed through Where's George was used in a 2006 research paper published by theoretical physicist Dirk Brockmann and his coworkers. The paper described statistical laws of human travel in the United States, and developed a mathematical model of the spread of infectious disease resulting from such travel. The article is in the January 26, 2006 issue of the journal Nature.[18] Researchers found that 57% of the nearly half a million dollar bills studied traveled between 30 miles and 500 miles over approximately nine months in the United States.[19] There is a short clip of a Brockmann's presentation on the subject from the IdeaFestival on YouTube.[20] More recently, "Where's George?" data have been used to attempt to predict the rapidity and pattern of projected spread of the 2009 swine flu outbreak.[21] [edit] References
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