- Nobody ever loses for being too slow to do what Simon says.
- One argument against any “Privacy Bill of Rights:” If private entities have unfettered rights to use your (voluntarily relinquished) private data then that guarantees the government can’t monopolize it.
- Can you tell what language someone speaks if you only hear them laugh?
- I need dry erase markers in burgundy, grey, aquamarine, etc. It says something about academics’ total lack of style that they are always red, green, blue, black.
- I saw the 2011 The Three Musketeers on a plane. So that we would understand they were French the characters spoke with British accents. Except d’Artagnon who spoke like a Yankee. This is a general phenomenon where to an American movie audience British accent=any historical non American squares or evil geniuses.
- Look at what google Ngram gives for ‘2001.’ Peaks at the turn of three centuries. Think you know why? Well now look at 2002, 2003, 2004, etc. The effect fades out at about 2020. Best theory gets a prize.
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April 3, 2012 at 1:18 am
Alex F
If you turn off smoothing, you see that there’s a sharp, sharp peak at 1905 for all of those numbers. But if you actually look up the numbers by year, there are about 5000 hits for any of 2001, 2002, 2003, etc in each of the years before and after 1905.
N-Gram “2002”, spike at year 1905:
http://bit.ly/HaJlCM
Run the search in 1903: 4880 results for “2002”
http://bit.ly/HayZSj
Run the search in 1904: 5250 results for “2002”
http://bit.ly/HbafWu
Run the search in 1905: 5290 results for “2002”
http://bit.ly/HL5pCG
Run the search in 1905: 5920 results for “2002”
http://bit.ly/HF5sAF
By contrast, the word “hello” also gets about 5000 hits per year over that time period but there’s no spike at 1905: http://bit.ly/HF6jBx
Conclusion: Google’s data is busted.
April 3, 2012 at 1:20 am
Alex F
(The second running-the-search-in-1905 should be 1906, whoops.)
April 3, 2012 at 1:46 am
Jason Collins
My theories evaporated when I removed smoothing and zoomed in, showing the result around 1900 is being driven by twin spikes in 1899 and 1905, regardless of the number between 2001 and 2008 being searched.
Now, search for “genetic engineering”, “microwave oven” or “genome”. Same two spikes. Google has got something askew.