A team of scientists recently conducted a study of human travel patterns by secretly tracking the whereabouts of cell phone users. Aiming to investigate the geographical patterns in which humans travel over time, the researchers studied the trajectory of 100,000 anonymized cell phone users — randomly selected from more than 6 million users — and tracked their locations over a six-month period via the calls and text messages they sent and received. Also included for validation purposes were data that captured the location of 206 cell phone users every two hours for an entire week.
