If you dig through to the source reddit posting [1], you can see that the post only really puts 6 different individual taxi IDs out there for visualization. To me, only the first 4 seem like a good visual fit for the prayer times, and the overall trip heatmap [2] suggests that they may just be part of a larger pattern of eating/taking a break at sunrise, noon, and sunset for all cab drivers. While the blog posting is begging the question of whether or not the data release contains personal data as a result of these findings, much more invasive findings have already been published (and posted to HN) with this NYC Taxi data, like corroborating individual trips by high profile people. [3] Notwithstanding the privacy issues and questionable methods used to obfuscate the data, I personally think that the release is a great step in the right direction for open data.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/2t201h/identifying_muslim_cabbies_from_trip_data_and/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/2t201h/ide...</a>
[2] <a href="https://i.imgur.com/lyK0qTI.png" rel="nofollow">https://i.imgur.com/lyK0qTI.png</a>
[3] <a href="http://research.neustar.biz/2014/09/15/riding-with-the-stars-passenger-privacy-in-the-nyc-taxicab-dataset/" rel="nofollow">http://research.neustar.biz/2014/09/15/riding-with-the-stars...</a><p>EDIT: For better or worse, deducing ethnicity, country of origin, and/or religion is probably much easier based on this data set [4]. People have come up with analyses like this [5]. The data analysis is great, but my fingers are crossed that tabloid newspapers and their ilk don't pick this up and run off xenophobic, fear-mongering articles.<p>[4] <a href="https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Transportation/Medallion-Drivers-Active/jb3k-j3gp" rel="nofollow">https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Transportation/Medallion-Drive...</a>
[5] <a href="http://vizual-statistix.tumblr.com/image/107987401281" rel="nofollow">http://vizual-statistix.tumblr.com/image/107987401281</a>
In Copenhagen, it was revealed a few years ago that racist customers who didn't want a muslim taxi driver told the central when ordering a cab that they were 'bringing a large dog', and the operators at the centrals knew and respected this as the secret code that the customer wanted an ethnic Danish driver. This is obviously illegal but I dont know whether they stopped the practise.
Yeah, the OP has serious blinders here. Like the student who threw alarmist BS about how the data could be used to track visits to stripper clubs...this seems to be an example of cherry-picking the data. So, I'm not good at discerning deviation from thousands of small dots...what's the numerical measure of the correlation here? What are the significance of those blue lines when they show a trend over empty black space?<p>And what does the analysis/trendlines look like on drivers who can be discerned as <i>not</i> being Muslim?<p>I'm all for personal data protection, and the TLC erred in not anonymizing the data. But this weak analysis and alarmist bullshit by a PhD serves little but to give governments more excuse to hide public data.<p>edit: Linking to someone more well versed than me, regarding the cherry-picking of data in the "Riding with the Stars" article <a href="http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2014/11/21/the-antidote-for-anecdata-a-little-science-can-separate-data-privacy-facts-from-folklore/" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2014/11/21/the-antidote...</a>