Where's Willy?

Where's Willy?, is a website that tracks Canadian paper money — most commonly five dollar bills, but also higher denominations. "Where's Willy" is free, supported by users who pay a fee for extra features. The name Willy refers to Sir Wilfrid Laurier - the first French Canadian Prime Minister whose portrait appears on the $5 bill.

Since Canada has replaced the one and two dollar bills with more durable coins, the $5 note is the smallest denomination tracked by Where's Willy.

The free site, established by Hank Eskin, a computer consultant in Brookline, Massachusetts, allows people to enter their local postal code and the serial and series of any Canadian denomination from $5 up to $100 they want to track. Once a bill is registered, the site reports the time between sightings, the distance traveled and any comments from the finders, and anyone who registered the bill earlier learns about it by e-mail and/or text messaging.

To increase the chance of having a bill reported, users write or stamp text on the bills encouraging bill finders to visit www.whereswilly.com and track the bill's travels.

Where's Willy is a currency tracking spinoff of Where's George, a site that tracks United States dollars.

Willy Index

The "Willy Index" is a method of rating users based on how many bills they've entered and also by how many total hits they've had. The formula is as follows:

$100*({\sqrt {(}}\ln(BillsEntered))+\ln(Hits+1))*[1-(DaysofInactivity/100)]$

Because of the nature of square roots and natural logs, the higher a user's bills entered and hits are the more of each are necessary to increase the score.

External links

• Where's Willy? web site
• Directory of Where's Willy Related Sites
• Where's George? web site
• Euro tracking web site