hedonometer

New Web site measures global happiness

There are many measurable quantities in the universe, but we would not have called "happiness" one of them.

Since 2008, however, a team of scientists from the University of Vermont and the Mitre Corporation, led by mathematicians Chris Danforth and Peter Dodds, have been figuring out a way to try.

Together, they've been working on a piece of software called the Hedonometer that measures -- and graphs -- data pulled from Twitter Garden Hose, a random sample of 10 percent of all tweets, to gauge how happy the world is on any given day.

A paid team … Read more