Gates scholar publishes Twitter happiness map

  • March 30, 2011
Gates scholar publishes Twitter happiness map

Alex Davies has created a Twitter map showing which countries are the happiest.

Germany is the happiest country in the world, according to a happiness map based on Twitter users.

The country rated highest on the map which rated words and icons used to describe happiness on social network site Twitter.

It was closely followed by Mexico, the US, the Netherlands and Denmark. Sweden lived up to its depressive reputation and rated lowest, although the map only tracked those countries where there was enough tweeting going on to make a rating possible.

Other countries which scored among the lowest on happiness were Colombia, Argentina, Malaysia and Canada. The UK was fairly unhappy, rating 18th out of the 25 countries measured. This compared with India, which rated 7th. In Africa, Egypt was several places ahead of Nigeria.

The map was compiled by Gates scholar Alex Davies [2010] who determined levels of happiness from looking at high-level correlations between words and emoticons.

Due to the high number of tweets from the US and Brazil, Alex was able to break down the happiness rating by regions. It shows that in the US, Tennessee and Colorado are the happiest states with Nevada and Mississippi the least happy. New Yorkers and Californians are somewhere in the middle with New Yorkers slightly more upbeat than their West coast counterparts.

Alex looked at where people were and what they were Tweeting and created language models to assess the distribution of words and icons associated with happiness and unhappiness.

“It was important to have a model that was not just tied to English words, so it is in part based on smiley faces,” he says.  “As tweets are very short, emoticons in them provide a good indicator of whether a person is happy or sad.

But for tweets without emoticons, we have learnt to predict sentiment from the complex interactions between emoticons and words.”

This involves tracking tweets with words that appear together more often as well as those that appear with particular emoticons. This explains, for instance, why the late footballer Dean Richards is listed among the sad terms on the UK map.

In addition, since Twitter is a very multi-lingual site, even within countries, various languages often appear in words for any given country.

Alex, who is from Australia, started his PhD in Engineering in October. He says his work on the happiness map may not form part of his PhD. His main interest is in statistical modelling.

Alex’s Twitter map has got coverage around the world:

http://uk.ibtimes.com/articles/129868/20110402/tweet-twitter-happiest-country-germany-happiness-map.htm

http://www.myscience.me.uk/wire/germans_top_table_of_happiest_tweets-2011-cambridge

http://www.myscience.me.uk/wire/germans_top_table_of_happiest_tweets-2011-cambridge

http://www.greenecopath.com/general-interest/germany-happiest-country-according-to-study-of-tweets/

Photo: Salvatore Vuono and www.freedigitalphotos.net

Latest News

New thinking for education leaders

A Gates Cambridge Scholar has co-authored a new book which is being described by leading educationalists as transforming the way schools think about change. The Pruning Principle offers a new approach to educational leadership, drawing inspiration from horticulture to address the chronic issues of overwork and inefficiency in schools. The authors, Gates Cambridge Scholar Dr Simon […]

A passion for biotech innovation in Africa

Taryn Adams has long been interested in bridging the gap between science and business in order to ensure science has practical, useful applications. Coming from South Africa, she says the innovation that results from linking science and business, particularly in biotech, is still in its early stages, but she feels there is room to make […]

Caught on camera: how we see the world through digital images

Emmanuel Iduma will be one of the first people to do the University of Cambridge’s new PhD in Digital Humanities and he brings a wealth of experience in multimedia to the subject. Emmanuel [2024] is not only an acclaimed writer, but has been fascinated by the role of photography for many years – how photographs […]

Tributes paid to Arif Naveed – ‘a brilliant scholar and an even better human being’

It is with great sadness that the Trust has learned of the death of Gates Cambridge Scholar Arif Naveed [2014]. Arif did his PhD in Education at the University of Cambridge and won the Bill Gates Sr Award in 2018. This is an award nominated by other scholars and their nominations show the impact Arif […]