Life vs. Tax(es) vs. Death

As the famous saying goes: Nothing is certain in life but death and taxes. Really?


Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of life in all years.
life 1.00
taxes | tax 0.57
death 0.36

Fortunately, there's still a lot more life left than death and taxes :-) , though taxes do peak every year when we in the US can't avoid thinking about them: filing time! Note that life and death increase in Google news popularity...

Harvard University vs. United States Naval Academy vs. University of Idaho vs. University of Southern California vs. Syracuse University

As a sequel to our comparison of the two presidential teams and spouses yesterday, I faced off their alma maters. Luckily, both Michelle and Barack Obama attended the same university (Harvard) so that we don't go over Google Trends' limit of five terms. The other academic institutions are: Syracuse University (Biden), United States Naval Academy (John McCain), University of Idaho (Palin) and University of Southern California (Cindy McCain).


Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of "university of south... in all years.
"harvard university" 2.88
"united states naval... 0.06
"university of idaho... 0.62
"university of south... 1.00
"syracuse university... 1.46

It's no surprise that Harvard University has the highest Google-popularity, the US Naval Academy on the other hand is lower than I would have expected. Notice that all "civilian" universities see a downward trend.

Michelle Obama vs. Joe Biden vs. Barack Obama vs. Sarah Palin vs. Cindy McCain vs. John McCain

Tonight I changed the format: let's compare the convention speeches of the 2 main-party presidential tickets and the spouses. I took the transcripts from the official convention websites. I looked how many words they used. Also, how many sentences and characters (excl. spaces) did the speeches have? I summarized these three measures in a bubble graph:



Another way of comparing these "bunches" of words is by means of word clouds whereby the larger a word, the more frequently it occurs in the speech (using Wordle). They're all the rage, aren't they?


Copyright Newshour with Jim Lehrer (PBS) (CC Attribution Noncommercial license).




Copyright rklau (CC Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike license).




Copyright Newshour with Jim Lehrer (PBS) (CC Attribution Noncommercial license).




Copyright Newshour with Jim Lehrer (PBS) (CC Attribution Noncommercial license).




Copyright Newshour with Jim Lehrer (PBS) (CC Attribution Noncommercial license).




Copyright Newshour with Jim Lehrer (PBS) (CC Attribution Noncommercial license).


I'll let you draw your own conclusions this time.
Update 10-5-08: As I explain in this new post, Wordle has a lot more settings than I was aware of. Here are the improved, "corrected" word clouds.

Michelle Obama (improved)



Joe Biden (improved)



Barack Obama (improved)



Sarah Palin (improved)



Cindy McCain (improved)



John McCain (improved)

Wine vs. Coffee vs. Tea vs. Beer vs. Soda

Today's face-off compares the Google-popularity of the common beverage categories (excluding the unprepared, naturally-available milk and water):


Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of wine in all years.
wine 1.46
coffee 1.00
tea 0.90
beer 0.82
soda 0.26

Wine triumphs! Does this mean the US is a top wine consuming nation after all? Of course not: according to US government statistics, Americans for instance consume 11 times more coffee than wine:



Of course, the annual peak of wine consumption at year's end doesn't hurt as is evident in the Google Trends graph.

Imitation

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery... A few days ago, I commented on the FiveThirtyEight blog and linked to my Joe Biden vs. Wesley Clark vs. Evan Bayh vs. Kathleen Sebelius vs. Tim Kaine post. Today, I notice this post: Guess Who's a Celebrity Now? where he uses Google Trends like I do. Thanks for reading my blog, Nate Silver :-)

Nazi vs. Anarchist vs. Fascist vs. Gestapo vs. Traitor

There's a lot of talk about the negative effect of political name-calling on the state of democracy in the US. In my native tongue Dutch we call that type of argument dooddoeners, literally "death-renderers." They make any form of dialogue impossible, they stop it "dead in its tracks," which is exactly what they are meant to do. A related concept is reductio ad Hitlerium. Anyway, I compared five of those names:


Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of anarchist in all years.
nazi 7.40
anarchist 1.00
fascist 0.40
gestapo 0.40
traitor 0.30

Nazi is by far the favorite (though declining in Google-popularity) and makes it hard to see what's going on with the other terms. Let's leave out Nazi:


Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of anarchist in all years.
anarchist 1.00
fascist 0.42
gestapo 0.42
traitor 0.30

The frontrunner anarchist is also declining in use while the others are more or less stable. Note the tremendous uptick of traitor at the very end caused by the McCain campaign's extensive use of many allusions to this dooddoener against regarding Obama.

Update: I corrected the last paragraph.

Abortion vs. Gay Marriage vs. Teen Pregnancy vs. Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice

Today, with the news of the Republican VP choice's daughter having a teen pregnancy, I'd like to compare a number of these type of "value" terms that polticians esp. like to focus on.


Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of "gay marriage" in all years.
abortion 5.20
"gay marriage" 1.00
"teen pregnancy" 0.50
"pro-life" 0.20
"pro-choice" 0.10

Abortion dominates this face-off and gay marriage had its peak during the 2004 presidential campaign. But what about the other terms? I downloaded the Google Trends data spreadsheet and made a graph with a log scale on the Y-axis and also log trend lines for each term:


Log scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of "gay marriage" in all years.
abortion 5.20
"gay marriage" 1.00
"teen pregnancy" 0.50
"pro-life" 0.20
"pro-choice" 0.10

All terms are declining in Google-popularity though gay marriage is falling the fastest.

Huricane vs. Tsunami vs. Earthquake vs. Tornado vs. Typhoon

With hurricane Gustav threatening to wreak havoc in Louisiana (and beyond) as I type this, I thought it might be time to face off natural disasters:


Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of tsunami in all years.
hurricane 1.40
tsunami 1.00
earthquake 0.60
tornado 0.40
typhoon 0.20

The calamitous Christmas 2004 tsunami swept all other disasters away... Nevertheless, hurricanes are much more often googled as they are far more common. As expected, they peak around this time of the year as they are a seasonal phenomenon, the most infamous example being hurricane Katrina which hit New Orleans almost exactly three years ago. A 2007-only graph shows a typical annual pattern:


Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of tsunami in 2007.
hurricane 2.40
tsunami 1.00
earthquake 1.10
tornado 1.10
typhoon 0.50