How celebrities like - or not - NYC Cab Drivers Council

Morgan Dess / Abaca USA

Big Data - crunching a lot of information about things that do not recognize the people to learn - usually associated with the company. But as it turns out, there is an incredible amount of data analysts can learn. Even things like the number of people as actors Bradley Cooper and Jessica Alba have changed drivers in taxis at: possibly zero, according to Gawker.

Apparently, the Taxi & Limousine Commission of the City of New York has drivers to record a variety of information, including the points of origin and recipient, the amount of the fees, and each toe. Using a Freedom of Information Act request, a technical expert Chris Wong received about 50 gigabytes of data from the Agency , as he explains.

Another expert, Vijay Pandurangan, analyzes the results. He realized that despite all the information should be anonymous, if you do not get too specific details on more than 173 million individual journeys, it was easy, the Protect setting and receive the latest information, including the number of taxis and the number the license.

It's bad enough, but the names of the passengers, fortunately, were not taken into account. But on the Internet, all information you can go around the dams. A graduate of Northwestern student named Anthony Tockar realized that sometimes it can match the driving information with photos of celebrities . If you are someone like Bradley Cooper and Jessica Alba, and there is a date and timely image to a taxi license number or medallion is in sight, more information will be very easy.

In the case of Brad Cooper, we now know that the taxi took him in Greenwich Village, perhaps Meliboea dinner and paid $ 10.50 secured without tip. Ironically, in the taxi, he met the photographer to escape! We also do not know that Jessica Alba came in his taxi outside the hotel, the Trump SoHo, and somewhat surprisingly a point to his $ 9 add Well, while this information is relatively harmless, especially in the years down the line I found information which are not in the public before. Given the speculative dribble that usually accompanies these pictures (believe me, I know!) Would be a celebrity journalist happy to hear this additional information.

Yes, the paparazzi are probably set the retention of scientific data, even now.

At Gawker, combined author JK Trotter cab file with celebrity photos, of which there are obviously many. Trotter was able data for this ride taxi who would like to see Jessica Biel, Emma Roberts and Evan Peters.

What is surprising is the number of mentions here that the taxi driver is not a point above the base rate to record celebrities: Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, Amanda Bynes, Bradley Cooper and Olivia Munn. The database was wrong?

Some celebrities have denied the allegations. Alba and Cooper spokesman denied the stories:

"This story is not true," said her publicist Gawker. "Jessica always makes a point in bar tip, even if you pay by credit card." After falling earlier comment and ask us to kill this story, sent us Cooper publicist made a statement. "Bradley is the subway when I was in New York when he was a taxi, let no advice really great about it."

As it turns out, "the vast majority of passengers who have paid for travel money," are providing a point $ 0 Maybe everyone is not listed expensive. Maybe some driver record something for it against when assessing declare their taxes no trace.

Or maybe some celebrities are tight with a dollar and a bad tipper. God knows there are other examples as alleged Floyd Mayweather the boxer or football player LeSean McCoy .