Hal Varian passes along this amusing result if you query Google Insights for Search for searches on “mixed drinks” and “hangovers.”
Hal Varian passes along this amusing result if you query Google Insights for Search for searches on “mixed drinks” and “hangovers.”
Good one. Now try “mixed drinks” vs “stds”. Scary.
The mid-Jan to mid-Feb data are interesting in that hangover searches spiked both same day as mixed drink searches spiked, and the day after. My half-serious theory/hypothesis would be that during this period people planning to make/order a lot of mixed drinks (or choose between mixed drinks and other drinks) that evening still had memories of that particularly bad New Year’s Day hangover fresh in their minds, so they also researched hangovers prior to their evening drinking to have a better sense of risk/reward, but of course once they were out and had consumed a couple of drinks, rationality went out the window and they ended up with a hangover the next day, searching for something to mitigate the pain from both the hangover and from kicking themselves.
Makes sense, especially with the blue spikes mostly either leading or coinciding with the red ones. I also like how the blue spikes most often occur on Saturdays!
Check out the inverse relationship between searches on “irs” and searches on “guns” http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=irs%2Cguns&geo=US&date=today%203-m&cmpt=q
I was wondering if there would be a positive correlation, but I don’t have a theory/hypothesis as to why there would be a negative correlation. Any thoughts?
Economists finally discovered Saturdays!
Cleary, economists have a lot of spare time.
Interesting tool, though, tricky to use correctly.
It looks like precisely a one day lag. That sounds about right.
Hypotheses for Brooks:
(1) Info on how to deal with the IRS and guns are substitutes.
(2) After trying to read incomprehensible tax code, people become angry and increasingly interested in guns (hence the lag)
(3) After reading up on IRS, people realize they have tax rebates coming.
(4) (most likley) The gun searches spike on weekends; this is recreational searching. The IRS searches spike on Mondays and slowly decline — this is work-related.
Also for Brooks: “irs” and “fishing” have a similar pattern to “irs guns,” hence my conjecture that its simply work vs. recreation.
Better yet, try “mixed drinks” and then “morning after pill.”
To Brooks: “irs” & “cooking” is almost identical to “irs-guns.”
To Anonymous: “mixed drinks-morning after” … beautiful. You’re turning this into an art form.
Charles — good point, thanks.
Charles,
My failure to think of weekdays vs. weekends reminds me of something George Carlin said. (Paraphrasing) A year is a natural unit of time. A month is a natural unit of time. A week is NOT a natural unit of time…which is why the pigeons in the Financial District can’t figure out why no one is there to toss them bread on weekends.
Try work vs play…
Most of these oscillations reflect the weekly nature of work/play cycle.
“day after pill” also peaks on weekends, or right after
Cheers!
Interesting. Try “fuel prices” and you will notice two distinct peaks in 2005 and 2008. If you compare “fuel prices” to “fuel economy”, you will note a lone spike in “fuel economy” in 2009.
“Terrorism” exhibits an interesting downward trend.
Omitted variable bias!!!
It actually looks like if you plot ANYTHING with ANYTHING else, you more or less get this pattern, i.e. there is some sort of seasonality within the day. We’d probably need to strip out the cycle.