Pplapi: A virtual database of the entire human population
1–10 of 45 posts
Re: Pplapi: A virtual database of the entire human population
#2This is part of my research and I'm happy to answer any questions.
I gave a preliminary poster about this a few months ago:
http://imiller.utsc.utoronto.ca/media/ci-2016/2016-06-03_a-s...
This project is under active development as I wrap up my PhD.
Re: Pplapi: A virtual database of the entire human population
#3This is fascinating. It's not quite clear to me however if these are real people who have been anonymized or if they are a unitary statistical representation of the population?
Let's say I was looking for a startup opportunity. What kind of products can I build with this?
Re: Pplapi: A virtual database of the entire human population
#4This is part of my research and I'm happy to answer any questions. I gave a preliminary poster about this a few months ago: http://imiller.utsc.utoronto.ca/media/ci-2016/2016-06-03_a-s... This project is under active development as I wrap up my PhD.
Typically, when one does a university research study in the US involving human subjects there are something like IRB requirements (e.g. [http://humansubjects.stanford.edu/new/resources/consent/] I see research mentioned on the website, and also that the entire world population is mentioned in the data set. Have you run into anything like this?
Re: Pplapi: A virtual database of the entire human population
#5This is fascinating. It's not quite clear to me however if these are real people who have been anonymized or if they are a unitary statistical representation of the population? Let's say I was looking for a startup opportunity. What kind of products can I build with this?
> Currently, Agent Space contains a simulated entry for each of the ~7 billion humans alive in 2014
Re: Pplapi: A virtual database of the entire human population
#6This is part of my research and I'm happy to answer any questions. I gave a preliminary poster about this a few months ago: http://imiller.utsc.utoronto.ca/media/ci-2016/2016-06-03_a-s... This project is under active development as I wrap up my PhD.
Typically, when one does a university research study in the US involving human subjects there are something like IRB requirements (e.g. [ http://humansubjects.stanford.edu/new/resources/consent/ ] I see research mentioned on the website, and also that the entire world population is mentioned in the data set. Have you run into anything like this?
It's a synthetic world population derived from public population data; these are not real people (i.e. human subjects) and the source raw data were not identifiable or even individual-level data.
I nevertheless think there are a number of issues raised by the possibility of a human population database, but to be clear: pplapi does not have actual people in it. I am currently writing about some of these issues.
Re: Pplapi: A virtual database of the entire human population
#7This is part of my research and I'm happy to answer any questions. I gave a preliminary poster about this a few months ago: http://imiller.utsc.utoronto.ca/media/ci-2016/2016-06-03_a-s... This project is under active development as I wrap up my PhD.
This is really fascinating.
Have you given any thought to the possibility of providing this synthetic population on a finer grained basis? It could be extremely useful if this were available for, e.g., each U.S. county (or even something smaller than that).
Edit: I noticed that each person has a lat/long location. So maybe a different way of framing my question would be, at what level of geographic granularity does this reflect differences in the distribution of the various characteristics? And, assuming that it reflects sub-national variations, have you considered allowing a random agent to be selected within an arbitrary geographic area?
Re: Pplapi: A virtual database of the entire human population
#8This is fascinating. It's not quite clear to me however if these are real people who have been anonymized or if they are a unitary statistical representation of the population? Let's say I was looking for a startup opportunity. What kind of products can I build with this?
They are not real people, but it is not a "unitary statistical representation" either. At the country level, crossed by the age/sex level, pplapi agents track pretty closely to real humans. Other dimensions (e.g. income) have more noise in them, so they are less reliable.
Re: Pplapi: A virtual database of the entire human population
#9This is part of my research and I'm happy to answer any questions. I gave a preliminary poster about this a few months ago: http://imiller.utsc.utoronto.ca/media/ci-2016/2016-06-03_a-s... This project is under active development as I wrap up my PhD.
This is really fascinating. Have you given any thought to the possibility of providing this synthetic population on a finer grained basis? It could be extremely useful if this were available for, e.g., each U.S. county (or even something smaller than that). Edit: I noticed that each person has a lat/long location. So maybe a different way of framing my question would be, at what level of geographic granularity does t…
Absolutely. This is an active project and I have a plugin system for synthesizing additional data sources. In the research literature, I have seen several impressive US census-derived synthetic population projects, so finer-grained data are a future direction.
Re: Pplapi: A virtual database of the entire human population
#10This is fascinating. It's not quite clear to me however if these are real people who have been anonymized or if they are a unitary statistical representation of the population? Let's say I was looking for a startup opportunity. What kind of products can I build with this?
> Currently, Agent Space contains a simulated entry for each of the ~7 billion humans alive in 2014
Ah, I interpreted "based on" to mean that this might be an extension of that work. What comprised in this extension being a bit ambiguous.