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Full Discussion Board Idea #1: Repurposing gently-used, second-hand data during times of crisis

I can't be the only one teaching online statistics this Spring. Last fall, I refreshed ALL of my discussion boards for my online version of Psychological Statistics. I haven't done so since 2020, and my students responded well to my new discussion topics, all of which are centered in statistical literacy and improving problem-solving with data.

My first one is based on this old blog post about how residents of Houston used a Whataburger location map to figure out which parts of Houston were without electricity following Hurricane Meryl.

Here is how I presented it to my students:


You never know where valuable data visualizations will come from!


For instance, following Hurricane Beryl, Texans used the Whataburger app to track power outages across Houston. Whataburger is a popular restaurant chain in the South. Its app has a feature where users can quickly see open or closed locations. Normally, this is used by hungry people to find the closest, open location. HOWEVER: There are SO MANY Whataburgers in Houston that users could use it to track power outages since locations without power (in gray) would indicate that a neighborhood didn't have power, while a location in orange indicates that a neighborhood did have power.


See the Tweet below for an example fo what it looked like during hurricane recovery in Houston:

https://x.com/BBQBryan/status/1810509150842974308


This information from the app was never intended to help American citizens recover from a hurricane. Personally, as a data nerd, I love this. I love that immediate aid was given to people in Texas, and no one had to bother the electric company for updates, and it is just a clever repurposing of data.


MY DISCUSSION FOR YOU THIS WEEK:


  1. Here is a map of all Whataburger locations:

https://www.scrapehero.com/location-reports/Whataburger-USA/




What other natural disasters happen in the Whataburger portions of the country? Under what other circumstances could the poweroutage map help out Americans?


2. Think about our part of the country. What stores/restaurants could be used to track power outages in NW PA? If you want to talk about stores/restaurants in your hometown, go ahead and do so (just let us know where you are from).


3.Who else could benefit from this sort of data? Aside from individual people just trying to track power availability in their town, how else could this, or similar data, be used by larger organizations?


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