Monday, November 3, 2008
Time for another stats post! Last week I overheard that people tend to get sicker around the holidays because they eat less healthily. Seems like something that we can prove with statistics, right? Here we go.
Below is a graph of people googling "eating healthy", courtesy of google trends:
As you can see, each year starts out with a bang. Working towards a healthier lifestyle is a New Years Resolution for many. Then it drops off rather quickly. Most interesting (yet not surprising) are the huge downward spikes at Thanksgiving and Christmas. No one thinks about healthy eating, it's time to eat traditional food with your family, stuff yourself and watch football.
A shoutout to Nate Abbott, who suggested looking for a correlation in the term "upset stomach", pictured below:
Notice the large upswing late in the year. It correlates nicely with Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years. Again, not uber surprising, but it's a start.
I had to switch over to google insights to find a graph that might give us a window into people getting sick (the volume of searches doesn't need to be as large on Insights). Behold, googles for "i am sick":
Christmas & New Years are the "sickest" time of year. Well obviously, because people just get sicker in the winter...bad weather and more germs. Right? Well...let's narrow it down to a state like Texas, which doesn't have cold & snowy weather.
So, although the difference is not as pronounced, you can see that in the 2005, 2006, and 2007, the highest months are January, December, and November respectively. Something to think about...
Anyone want to give some theories as to why "eating healthy" drops so low in the summer? Please post your theories in the comments below.
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