my own worst enemy

Finding your average home

Thursday, June 14, 2007

There has been an inquiry as to how I was able to find my average hometown. Well, I'll you. It was no easy task. It took hours of mapping, calculation, configuration, and persperation. Luckily the software guys at Google Maps and Microsoft did all of that for me. All I had to do was:

1. Make a list of all the places I have lived. My criteria was simple; I had to actually "move" there and live there approximately one month. High school summer programs, college dorms, and summer lodgings during college all count. Summer camps, band camps, sports camps, and vacations do not count on account of their short nature (one week). The one gray item on my list is Fairfax, VA, when I spent 3.5 living out of various hotels for my job. Since I wasn't living in my California apartment during that time, I'm counting it.
2. Determine the latitude/longitude of each residence. This is where those sweaty engineers at Google Maps helped out. You can see a map here.
3. Take a weighted average of the lat./long.'s. I determined how long (in months) I've lived at each location. I multiplied that number by the latitude and longitude for the location. Do it for all locations, add them all up, then divide by the total number of months in my life. The result is the average lifetime latitude/longitude. See the table below for the numbers.

Location	Months	Lat (N)	Long (E)	Weighted Lat (N)	Weighted Long (E)
Woodreed Ct.	48	38.32	-85.51	1839.63	-4104.95
Highgate Dr.	175	38.35	-85.43	6711.36	-14951.44
GSA	.75	38.21	-85.70	28.66	-64.28
GSP	1.25	39.03	-84.46	48.79	-105.58
Zahm Hall	27	41.70	-86.23	1126.00	-2328.40
Castle Point	3	41.72	-86.22	125.17	-258.66
Animal House	12	41.69	-86.22	500.37	-1034.69
Lafayette, IN	20	40.41	-86.89	808.38	-1737.85
Marina del Rey	3	33.98	-118.46	101.94	-355.38
Sheldon Chateau	21	33.91	-118.41	712.30	-2486.64
Fairfax, VA	3.5	38.86	-77.38	136.01	-270.84
TOTALS	314.5	--	--	12138.67	-27698.74
AVERAGE	--	--	--	38.59	-88.07

38.59ºN latitude, 88.07ºW longitude gives you Parkersburg, IL. See, I told you it was boring.

Labels: I'm a big nerd

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