Jump to content

Where's George?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 24.21.148.155 (talk) at 04:57, 1 March 2009 (→‎See also). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Where's George?
A screen shot taken from version 2.0 of the Where's George? website
A screen shot taken from version 2.0 of the Where's George? website
Type of site
Money circulation tracker
Available inEnglish
OwnerWhere's George? LLC
Created byHank Eskin
URLhttp://www.wheresgeorge.com/
RegistrationOptional

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 January 31, 2009, Where's George? has tracked over 144 million bills totaling more than $789 million.[2]

Overview

The 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, a program which allows these users to cruise the website advertisement free, access certain features 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]

Hits

A hit is when a bill registered with Where's George? is re-entered into the database. 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, 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'. A bill that goes a long period of time without a hit and then gets one is called a 'sleeper'.

Controversy

Wheres George? has been accused of costing the government money by marking bills and thus shortening their life. The website, however, 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 web site immediately ceased selling rubber stamps and no further action against the site was taken.[3] (The site now has links to third parties that sell rubber stamps.) 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]

Where's George? and geocaching

Examples of marked bills.

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]

George Score

The "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:

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 1,602.21 (as of January 23, 2009), and was the first user to break the 1500-George-Score mark and the one-million entered mark. Gary has entered over 1,131,000 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]

Community

Where'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, often at restaurants. Several have become annual events, and can vary widely in scope and size.[16]

Use in research

Although 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 that 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.[17] 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.[18] There is a short clip of a Brockman presentation on the subject from the IdeaFestival on YouTube.[19]

References

  1. ^ BJS (2006-01-25). "Web game provides breakthrough in predicting spread of epidemics" (HTML BLOG entry). Science Blog. Retrieved 2006-04-28.
  2. ^ http://www.wheresgeorge.com
  3. ^ a b c d e f Lacitis, Erik (2004-10-04). "Where's George? Tracking the travels of paper currency". Local News. The Seattle Times Company. Retrieved 2008-07-16.
  4. ^ Eskin, Hank (2008). "Bill Statistics by Denomination". George's Top 10. Where's George? LLC. Retrieved 2008-07-19.
  5. ^ a b Eskin, Hank (2008). "The 'Friends of Where's George?' Program". Tools/Fun. Where's George LLC. Retrieved 2008-07-19.
  6. ^ "Encyclopædia Georgetannica". Slowpoke. 2007. Retrieved 2007-08-23.
  7. ^ Eskin, Hank (2007). "Top 10 Bills Report - All Denominations". George's Top 10. Where's George? LLC. Retrieved 2008-07-19.
  8. ^ "§ 475. Imitating obligations or securities; advertisements". Cornell Law School. 2006. Retrieved 2006-09-29.
  9. ^ Moyer, Laura (2004-09-29). "Following the money". News. The Free Lance-Star Publishing Company.
  10. ^ "§ 333. Mutilation of national bank obligations". Cornell Law School. 2007. Retrieved 2007-11-06.
  11. ^ a b User Guidelines/Terms of Service/Rules, no. 4
  12. ^ User Guidelines/Terms of Service/Rules, no. 1
  13. ^ Eskin, Hank (2008). "Rules for using Where's George? with Geocaching". Where's George? 2.2. Where's George? LLC. Retrieved 2008-07-03.
  14. ^ Eskin, Hank. "Top Users Report". Retrieved 2009-01-23. 1. Wattsburg Gary 1,602.21 1,131,325 181,010 217,215 16.00% {{cite web}}: More than one of |author= and |last= specified (help)
  15. ^ User Guidelines/Terms of Service/Rules, no. 7
  16. ^ Eskin, Hank (2008). "Unofficial Where's George?/Where's Willy? Gatherings". Where's George?/Where's Willy? Discussion. Wheres George? LLC. Retrieved 2008-07-03.
  17. ^ Brockmann, D (2006-01-26). "The scaling laws of human travel" (PDF). Nature. 439: 462–465. doi:10.1038/nature04292. PMID 16437114. Retrieved 2006-04-28. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  18. ^ Associated Press (2006-01-26). "Researchers' plan to track disease: follow 'Where's George' cash trail". Health and medicine. St. Petersburg Times. Retrieved 2008-07-16.
  19. ^ Brockmann, Dirk. "Money Circulation Science" (Flash). IdeaFestival 2007. YouTube.com. Retrieved 2007-10-17.

See also

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Where%27s_George%3F&oldid=274060940"