The Blog.
#3 Correlation: weight loss & the charity sector
Once again, we’ve delved into Google’s archives to take a look at meaningless correlations between the charity sector and others.
This time we’ve searched for the term ‘charity’ vs ‘weight loss’.
Once again, we’ve delved into Google’s archives to take a look at meaningless correlations in the charity sector.
This time we compared ‘charity’ vs ‘weight loss’ in the UK over the last 12 months:
The most striking thing about this graph is the huge variation in both search terms in the first quarter - which, falls on December 25th.
The frequency with which people search for weight loss is self-explanatory. Interest falls off during December as people head out to enjoy some festive cheer, but the regret kicks in around Christmas Eve and BANG. Straight after lunch on Christmas Day, people are googling ways to shed the excess pounds on their sparkly new iPhones.
What’s slightly more interesting is that people’s interest in searching for charity drops drastically in the week or so before Christmas, with a low reached on December 25th. But then it rises (almost as fast as weight loss) and reaches a peak in early January.
There seems to be a rough correlation between the two at various other points during the year. But, for me, the second most striking is the dip on February 25th. A date only notable, as far as I can tell, as being the birthday of Julio Iglesias.
As a quick addendum, we’ve organised the search results below to show which term is searched for more. Charity is blue, and weight loss is red.
Interestingly, the only other search we ran that resulted in this order of countries was by sheep population. Why this might be is a question perhaps best answered in the next edition of Correlation Corner.
#2 Correlation: I hate my job
In the second of our series of Calculus Corner, we’re taking a look at how the search term for ‘I hate my job’ changes over the course of a given year and across different countries.
In the second of our series of Correlation Corner, we’re looking at how the search term, ‘I hate my job’ changes over the course of a year across different countries.
Unfortunately, our multilingual ability only extends to GCSE level French, and a literal translation of ‘I hate my job’ in Google Translate only seems to extend to Spanish, so we’ll only be looking at countries with enough native speakers of English and Spanish to register on Google Trends in this highly unscientific study.
First off, here’s the list of countries, in descending order of popularity, where the term is searched most often in the last 12 months:
Ireland
USA
Spain
UK
Mexico
Canada
Australia
South Africa
Malaysia
India
Brazil
Russia
A surprising choice at number one given so many tax-dodging tech giants have their HQs in Ireland.
Maybe the pool tables, free vending machines, and bean bag break-out rooms aren’t enough to compensate for the bitterness they feel about helping global conglomerates pay 11 times less tax than their local, friendly bookstore. Click here for more information.
With workers’ rights being practically non-existent, it’s hardly surprising that the US comes in second place.
To be honest, the order of the others is anyone’s guess.
So, with that out of the way let’s take a closer look at the UK and how the prevalence of ‘I hate my job’ has cropped up over the last 12 months:
As you can see, there are some pretty big spikes over the course of the year.
Having looked at the 2016/17 results, we can confirm this is a consistent pattern year on year.
Some of the peaks and troughs are relatively easy to explain. July to October is a quiet month. The pleasant summer weather makes even the most horrendous job more tolerable.
There’s a blip in mid-October when people have returned from their summer holidays. At this point, the cold hard reality of getting back to a job they hate really strikes home.
This leads neatly on to the biggest spike of the year, at the start of September.
A large proportion of that is taken up by teachers, with the remainder suffering from post-summer holiday blues.
The on Guy Fawkes's night? That’s anyone’s guess.
And there’s a predictable dip towards Christmas and an equally predictable spike in January when people come back from two weeks with friends and family to realise they need to not only go back to work again but relearn how to do their job.
There’s a final small jump in searches in mid-January, which is in part, due to the worst day of the year pseudoscience that tabloid newspapers wheel out each year. #BlueMonday
In conclusion, people start to realise how much they hate their job after a period of doing something fun.
Stay tuned for how that pans out in the next installment of Correlation Corner.
#1 Correlation: GDPR and Ed Sheeran
Whilst idly wondering to what degree people’s interest in GDPR had declined according to Google Trends since May 25th, I found myself contemplating how interest in this correlated to other things, like Ed Sheeran.
Read on to hear my thoughts
Whilst idly wondering to what degree people’s interest in GDPR had declined according to Google Trends since May 25th, we found ourselves contemplating how interest in this correlated to other things. To our surprise, we found that GDPR and Ed Sheeran were both roughly correlated until the introduction of the former.
Blue: GDPR
Red: Ed
Interest then dropped precipitously before a big spike in interest in Ed, which was then followed by an inverse correlation over time between GDPR.
Apparently, when people were Googling GDPR they weren’t searching for Ed, and vice versa.
What does this tell us?
Nothing, except that maybe people don’t care about GDPR as much at the weekend as they do about Ed.