Monday, December 21, 2009

Statement of purpose, or, "what is this all about"

A few weeks ago, I searched for a term on Google News and a chart popped up, showing the relative frequency of that search term over the past several decades. "That's interesting," I said, and put in another search term. And another. And another. And realized that there are very interesting trends to visualize and think about historically. When were certain terms used, and fall out of favor? Why might a certain news search rise and fall at a particular time? What memes have risen and fallen? How does something today compare with something in the past?

I plan to explore these much, much further. And hopefully find some interesting historical tidbits along the way.

For now, here's the chart for "Google News":


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