Floatingsheep in the Lexington Herald-Leader, or Santa Likes it Hot

Sometimes analog is better than digital. This is especially true when being featured on the front page of the the Lexington Herald-Leader on Christmas Eve. Belated scans of the newspaper article about our Christmassy maps are below...

Happy Holidays from Floatingsheep.org

With good tidings from all of us, the Floatingsheep team wishes you all a very happy holiday season, no matter your religious preference. With Christmas coming soon, we don't want you to go out chasing Old Saint Nick, as we're still a bit unsure of his whereabouts. We are sure, however, that our investigative work on Christmassy geographies is featured in the December 24th edition of the Lexington Herald-Leader. From the article:

Deep in the bowels of the geography department earlier this month, while Zook was engaged in his real work on how people use spatially based Internet data, he thought he'd come up with what passes for academic humor. He wondered how he could locate the exact whereabouts of Santa (because, really, who doesn't want to know this?) and torture his graduate students (and, really, who doesn't want to do this?) at the same time.

Enjoy the write-up by Amy Wilson and your holiday celebration, no matter where you may be. And if you're really that concerned about where Santa is, you can always track him on Google Maps throughout Christmas Eve. HO HO HO!

Searching for Santa: Locating the most Christmassy Points in the World

A question asked by children and adults for generations has been, "Where does Santa live?" While some may scoff that there is an obvious answer to this ("The North Pole") any rational thinker easily sees why that simply cannot be. The lack of a suitable landmass to construct the necessary castle and workshops, the deficit of a robust power grid and the complete absence of basic raw materials like wood, plastic or sugared plums, make the North Pole a poor location for any sort of industrial- or craft-style production. Moreover, the modern obsession with planting flags (both above and beneath the ice) guarantees a steady stream of unwanted (and potentially naughty) visitors.

It is far more reasonable to suppose that Santa has utilized a combination of locational analysis, centrography, transportation topographies and central place theory to select an optimal site for his headquarters. However, since access to his list of priorities (including secrecy) and model specifications is closely guarded, replicating Santa's thinking process is simply not possible.

Instead the Anglo-American research team of FloatingSheep.org decided to leverage the power of Web 2.0 technologies (user produced services and content) to triangulate Santa's location. After all the collective knowledge of the Internet is clearly more than any one of us alone. Right? Right?

Using the patented FloatingSheep.org approach we searched for references to "santa" and "reindeer" in user generated placemarks indexed by Google Maps. After all, Santa and Reindeer go together almost as well as that classic cinema couple, Turner and Hooch. Unfortunately for lovers of folk tales, the polar projections below illustrate that there is a decided dearth of references to Santa at the North Pole.

Polar Projection of Santa

Instead we see that the entire Nordic region of Europe is covered in a virtual "duvet of Santa"! North America needs to be content with a much lighter "blanketing of St. Nick". If one assumes that Santa needs to be located as close to the pole as possible, then a few other extreme northern locations also emerge, such as the "coverlet-ing of Father Christmas" on Svalbard and the "quilt-ing of Pere Noel" on the Severnaya Zemlya archipeligo.

Polar Projection of Reindeer

Reindeer are much less prevalent than Santa (which is hard to understand given the 8:1 ratio) but the Nordic region, Svalbard and Alaska are all looking like strong contenders.

However, it is only when we amalgamate Santa and Reindeer together in some kind of googlistic geo-genetic goo that we are able to zero in on the exact locations of Santa's global enterprise. (And they called us MAD! We'll show them!) We will of course not reveal the exact locations (we're hoping for more than coal in our stockings) but will highlight the general areas.

The MegaChristmas Index – Global View

The MegaChristmas Index – Polar View

In retrospect it seems so obvious, but the most Christmassy points in the world are Los Angeles (measured in raw Christmasness) and near the town of Kittilä, Finland (measured in Christmasness per capita). Clearly in the 21st century, Santa has recognized the value of geographical diversification in order to leverage the competitive advantages of each location. Los Angeles offers access to the creative talent of show business and the technological innovation of a world class manufacturing milieu. Kittilä offers...Trees? Moss? Rare Lichen? Hmmm...as we are less familiar with Northern Finland as befits some one in today's networked society, the locational advantages of Kittilä must wait until another posting. Any Kittilä-ites (-onians? –ese? –ians?) are welcome to address this issue as well.

We were at first stymied by the strong showing of Angola for reindeer but upon reflection we theorize that this is a likely location of Santa's post-December vacation. According to this theory, Santa flies his reindeer team for several well deserved weeks of R&R incognito. Since reindeer, however, are not indigenous to tropical climates, their presence does not go unnoted. Likewise, trips to the Falkland Islands, New Zealand, Australia and Florida seem highly probably as well. It should be noted that this is simply a theory and unlike the rigorous analysis on the location of Santa's workshop, further research on this topic is needed.

Likewise we plan on taking a closer look at the sub-national networks of Santa's enterprise. The U.S. maps below confirm Southern California's Santaness but shows some highly suspicious clusters of reindeerness in Texas and Missouri. Do these represent regional distribution centers? R&D centers? Back office customer support? Only further research will tell.

Santa Normalized in the U.S.
Reindeer Normalized in the U.S.

So. Age old question answered through the judicious use of technology.

We just hope we don't end up on the naughty list for this.