Google Frequency Plotter

Here's an app version of this xkcd comic that lets you plot the frequency of phrases according to Google searches.

Plot
for _ in
Enter a range like 1-10 or
a list like monday,tuesday,wednesday

Permalink to this chart

Some examples below the fold.

Sanity checks

How convenient.

Politics


[Thanks: Bryan]

Most frequent birth year: 1982

What you've got

Mind your phone

Procreation

Post permalinks to your favorites in the comments below.

Disclaimers: The number of search results reported by Google's search API is known to be occasionally bogus and is not a reliable indicator of anything in particular. Also, there's some bug here if you do a range query with only a single value. Finally, an exclamation point in the status message indicates an error in one query or the lack of any results.

9 comments:

  1. I think this one's a good predictor of a recession: http://bit.ly/8XBffH

    ReplyDelete
  2. Don't do what I say...

    In upcoming runoff for Brazilian presidential elections, the two candidates are Dilma Rousseff, from the party in power, and José Serra, from the opposition. According to polls, Rousseff leads by about 5%.

    Results for: "I will vote for _" :
    http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chxr=1,0,6800&chxt=x,y&chxl=0:|na%20dilma|no%20serra&chbh=a,0,2&chs=400x300&cht=bvg&chco=A2C180&chd=e:cP..&chtt=Google%20results%20for%20%22vou%20votar%20_%22

    Results for: "Vote for _" (imperative):
    http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chxr=1,0,11600&chxt=x,y&chxl=0:|na%20Dilma|no%20Serra&chbh=a,0,2&chs=400x300&cht=bvg&chco=A2C180&chd=e:..RR&chtt=Google%20results%20for%20%22Vote%20_%22

    ReplyDelete
  3. Nice, Brighten!

    But what I really take away from this is that xkcd is far too influential among CS professors.

    -the guy with a signed xkcd map of the internet on his door

    ReplyDelete
  4. Rodrigo: weird. Results also vary somewhat if you search for "_ is my favorite number" vs. "my favorite number is _".

    Dave: well ... no comment.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Furbabies vs. pets:

    http://tinyurl.com/28wecxy

    http://tinyurl.com/2e4w3ex

    So assuming most of those pets are mammals, most people don't use the abominable term "furbabies". Phew.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Percentages without context are interesting: http://tinyurl.com/246v9xh
    and
    http://preview.tinyurl.com/29t3uk8

    ReplyDelete
  7. Tomorrow I will:

    http://tinyurl.com/23r8g49

    but today I did:

    http://tinyurl.com/29rhmtr

    ReplyDelete
  8. Just a comment, this data would be much better featured as a bar graph. Using a line graph mistakenly implies that the data is continuous. E.g. the value for "I have 3.5 children" is not really the average between "I have 2" and "I have 3"

    ReplyDelete
  9. http://tinyurl.com/btkm27z

    ReplyDelete