2 Comments

The top 25! Ranking on "connectivity" is a really unique approach and I like how it differentiates what Flightlines offers from other "greatest cities" lists. Could you share how the "score" number was calculated? And to answer your prompt, I was surprised to see Guangzhou which I know absolutely nothing about - and consequently it was interesting, and made sense, to get to see its relatively miniscule number of international passengers.

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Sure! As the rankings become more data driven - we would like this scoring system to be more transparent, but here's how we calculate the score today:

```js

// Calculate base score with adjusted weights

let score = (

population * 0.4 + // Population impact

traffic.totalPassengers * 0.2 + // Total passengers

traffic.internationalPassengers * 0.3 + // International traffic

traffic.cargoTraffic * 20 + // Cargo traffic

(city === "Washington" ? 1000000 : 0) // Political capital bonus

) / 10;

// Apply global city multiplier if applicable

const multiplier = globalCityMultipliers[city] || 1.0;

score *= multiplier;

```

The last part is a subjective multiplier based on our assessment of parameters that we don't have quantitative data for yet- economics, culture, etc..

Yes! Guangzhou is a great example of the base case. It's a huge city - part of the Pearl River Delta (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangdong%E2%80%93Hong_Kong%E2%80%93Macao_Greater_Bay_Area). But, since Hong Kong acts as it's gateway to the world (where you'd likely fly if you were traveling to Guangzhou) most people in the west haven't heard of it.

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