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Where's George?

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Where's George?

URL	http://www.wheresgeorge.com/
Type of site	Money circulation tracker
Registration	Optional
Available language(s)	English
Owner
Created by	Hank Eskin
Launched	November 1998
Current status	Active

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, as well as 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 U.S.^[1] As of January 2, 2008, Where's George? is tracking more than 120 million bills totaling more than $659 million.

1 Overview
2 Hits
3 Where's George? and geocaching
4 "George Score"
5 Community
6 Use in research
7 References
8 See also
9 External links

Overview

The site was established in December 1998 by Hank Eskin, a database consultant in Brookline, Massachusetts. The name Where's George? refers to George Washington, whose portrait appears on the one dollar bill. Denominations besides the $1 can also be tracked via the website, although dollar bills are by far the most popular, followed by 20-dollar bills. To track a bill, a user enters his or her local ZIP Code and the serial number and series of any United States denomination. To reflect the fact that US currency does not remain exclusively within US borders, international users are also able to participate using an extensive database of unique codes assigned to non USA/Canada locations. Once a bill is registered, the site reports the time between sightings, the distance traveled between locations, as well as any comments from the finders (called "user notes"). Any bills dated 1963 or later can be tracked. To increase the chance of having a bill reported, some users (called "Georgers") write or stamp text on the bills encouraging bill finders to visit www.wheresgeorge.com and track the bill's travels. However, the site does not encourage the defacement of U.S. Currency. 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.^[2] The web site immediately ceased selling rubber stamps and no further action against the site was taken. However, the general view is that using Where's George? rubber stamps on currency is not illegal per se^[3], due to the intent clause in the United States Code covering mutilation. A variety are available from stamp vendors not affiliated with the Where's George? web site.

Hits

Where's George? does not have specific goals other than tracking currency's movement, but many users like to collect interesting patterns of hits, called bingos. A hit is when a bill registered with Where's George? is re-entered into the database. 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. ^[4] Most bills do not receive any responses, or hits, but many bills receive two or more hits. Double and triple-hitters are common, and bills with 4 or 5 hits are not unheard of. The site record is held by a $1 bill with 15 entries.^[5] Where's George? is supported by advertising, sales of T-shirts and other memorabilia, and by users who pay a fee for extra features. 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 ad free, and access certain features others cannot.

Where's George? and geocaching

Ways that users can ID their 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". 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."

"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. The formula is as follows:

<math>100\times\left[\sqrt{\ln({\rm bills\ entered})}+\ln({\rm hits}+1)\right]\times[1-({\rm days\ of\ inactivity}/100)]</math>

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 1,558.53 (as of 2007-11-07), and was the first user to have broken the 1500 mark. Gary has entered over 800,000 bills. Although there is a scoring system, the site makes it clear that this is not intended to be a contest.

Community

Wheres 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 have become annual events, and can vary widely in scope and size.^[6]

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,^[7] and there is a short clip of a Brockman presentation on the subject from the IdeaFestival on YouTube.^[8]

References

^ BJS (2006-01-25). Web game provides breakthrough in predicting spread of epidemics (HTML BLOG entry). Science Blog. Retrieved on 2006-04-28.
^ § 475. Imitating obligations or securities; advertisements. Cornell Law School (2006). Retrieved on 2006-09-29.
^ § 333. Mutilation of national bank obligations. Cornell Law School (2007). Retrieved on 2007-11-06.
^ Encyclopædia Georgetannica. Slowpoke (2007). Retrieved on 2007-08-23.
^ Top 10 Bills Report - All Denominations. Where's George? LLC (2007). Retrieved on 2007-12-03.
^ Annual Gatherings in the Forums.. WheresGeorge? forums (2007). Retrieved on 2007-11-07.
^ Brockmann, D; L. Hufnagel and T. Geisel (26 January 2006). "The scaling laws of human travel". Nature 439: 462–465. doi:10.1038/nature04292. PMID 16437114. Retrieved on 2006-04-28.
^ Brockmann, Dirk. Money Circulation Science (Flash). IdeaFestival 2007. YouTube.com. Retrieved on 2007-10-17.