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Twitter Sentiment Map Claims Times Square Is Happiest Place In NYC
By
Ben Yakas
Published Aug 21, 2013
Modified Aug 21, 2013
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Aug 21, 2013
Modified Aug 21, 2013
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For most New Yorkers, the least favorite part of NYC is Times Square, the Disneyfied midtown tourist vortex occupied by marauding costumed characters and comedy club ticket hawkers. And yet, according to a new Twitter-generated public sentiment survey, Times Square is actually the happiest place in NYC.
Researchers at the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI) generated the data in their research by classifying over 600K tweets: "using key words, phrases and emoticons to determine the mood of each tweet, this method, combined with geotagging provided by users, enables us to gauge public sentiment on extremely fine-grained spatial and temporal scales." In other words, the people who bother to tweet about where they are and use emoticons or words like "overjoyed" are the people who are "happiest" close to Times Square, which makes us feel a little better. They can have it!
"We find that public mood is generally highest in public parks and lowest at transportation hubs, and locate other areas of strong sentiment such as cemeteries, medical centers, a jail, and a sewage facility," the report, Sentiment in New York City: A High Resolution Spatial and Temporal View, states.
You can read the PDF]; and below, Motherboard helps break down the "happiest" parks and "saddest" transportation hubs in NYC:
Happiest Parks:
A1. Central Park
A2. New York Botanical Garden
A3. Pelham Bay Park
A4. Marcus Garvey Park
A5. Astoria Park
A6. Gantry Plaza State Park
A7. Red Hook Park
A8. Prospect Park
A9. Highland Park
A10. Jacob Riis Park
Worst Transportation Hubs:
B1. Hunterspoint Avenue train station
B2. Harlem 125th St. station
B3. Port Authority Bus Terminal
B4. Penn Station
B5. Midtown Tunnel
B6. Holland Tunnel
B7. Brooklyn Bridge
B8. Hugh L. Carey Tunnel
B9. JFK Airport
B10. LaGuardia Airport
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sentiments map
Times Square
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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