A mesmerizing animation of every taxi pickup in New York City

A team working at the new Cornell Tech campus in New York City has put together an impressive project built on a massive dataset of yellow cab pickups around the city. One output of the project is this somewhat mesmerizing GIF animating all the pickups:

These are not amazingly counterintuitive findings, though the prominence of the Lower East Side around 2-3 AM is striking, but they are cool to look at. More practical applications of the project include tools for riders and drivers looking to optimize their taxi strategy.