1140: Calendar of Meaningful Dates

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* March 15 is the {{w|Ides of March}}.
 
* March 15 is the {{w|Ides of March}}.
 
* March 21 is considered the first day of {{w|Spring (season)|spring}}, by a common convention in the northern hemisphere.  
 
* March 21 is considered the first day of {{w|Spring (season)|spring}}, by a common convention in the northern hemisphere.  
* April 1 is April Fool's Day.
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* April 1 is {{w|April Fool's Day}}.
 
* April 15 is {{w|Tax Day|US Individual Income Tax return filing day}}.
 
* April 15 is {{w|Tax Day|US Individual Income Tax return filing day}}.
 
* May 1 is {{w|International Workers' Day|International Workers' Day}}, or {{w|May Day|May Day}}.
 
* May 1 is {{w|International Workers' Day|International Workers' Day}}, or {{w|May Day|May Day}}.

Revision as of 16:51, 8 December 2012

Calendar of Meaningful Dates
In months other than September, the 11th is mentioned substantially less often than any other date. It's been that way since long before 9/11 and I have no idea why.
Title text: In months other than September, the 11th is mentioned substantially less often than any other date. It's been that way since long before 9/11 and I have no idea why.

Explanation

The calendar used in the comic is the standard Gregorian calendar used by most of western civilization. The comic looks at the frequencies of certain dates appearing in English writings indexed in the Google Ngram Viewer.

Some dates are more (or less) frequently mentioned because they have a special significance. For example:

In addition, the first of each month is generally more mentioned than others, perhaps because such dates are markers of a new month and may be used as landmark dates or deadlines. Similarly, the final day of each month is commonly a deadline day. Other dates, such as the 11th of each month (as noted in the title text), for example, have correlations which don't appear to be for any immediately obvious reason.

The date mentioned in the sub-heading (October 17th) is Randall's birthday.

Transcript

Calendar of Meaningful Dates
Each date's size represents how often it is referred to by name (e.g. "October 17th") in English-language books since 2000
(Source: Google ngrams corpus)
[A regular Gregorian calendar laid out in a grid, with some numbers larger than others.]
Comment.png add a comment!

Discussion

Seeing how the (northern hemisphere) summer months are bolder than the winter ones, I remember that someone said that "historical things" like wars and battles used to occur during the good weather months. Same for e.g. romance novels - people date and love on those dates. ‎81.34.231.6 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

If the search included Spanish dates in English texts, May 5th would be larger. 214.4.253.121 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I wonder if he took into account the month/day swap between the US and UK dating system (among other countries). 76.122.5.96 14:22, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

That's a good question. I entered July 4 and November 5 (Guy Fawkes Day) into Google Ngram, and the difference reflected in the calendar is only apparent when you put the month before the date.--Prooffreader (talk) 01:11, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
Yes, [there's a lot of difference](http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=November+5%2C+November+5th%2C5th+of+November%2CFifth+of+November%2Cfifth+of+November&year_start=1500&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3) in the spelling. --84.181.107.38 17:58, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Interesting about the 11ths -- perhaps that correlates with low passenger loads on airplanes as well, and thus why the 11th was chosen for the attack (the month of September having been chosen for some other reason).50.0.38.245 15:33, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

I want to point out that Randall doesn't know either, and I think he would have thought about the plane correlation, so I don't think that's the reason. I'm going to investigate this. --Jimmy C (talk) 02:53, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
September 11 (1973) is also the date of the coup d'etat in Chile. I suppose that might (partially) explain why this specific 11th has been mentioned more frequently even before 2001...
9/11 is also an important date in both the American Revolutionary War and the War in Europe half of World War 2. 169.233.101.195 21:19, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I second the Spanish language date in English texts. May 5th is routinely routinely called Cinco De Mayo in English. Has Randall weighed in on how this was handled? Donglebaker (talk) 18:16, 28 November 2012 (UTC) JC

I also wonder about the difference between the 4th of July (Big 4) and November the 5th (small 5) as being the two "firework" days in US and UK! 4th of July peaks at 0.00003 July the 4th 0.0000001 November the 5th peaks at 0.0000006 and 5th of November peaks at 0.00001 so there are big differences and also whether you pick anything but English 2009. Reader in Invisible Writings --90.208.142.152 19:42, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

No one forget that November 5th is also the day the Flux Capacitor was invented by Dr. Emmitt Brown using little more than a toilet seat and a minor concussion. I believe that is worth a mention.--Dangerkeith3000 (talk) 16:08, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

The transcript reads "[A regular Gregorian calendar laid out in a grid, with some numbers larger than others.]" In fact, there is no way to tell if this is a Gregorian or a Julian calendar; they both have the same months and days. The Gregorian calendar only differs from the Julian in its leap year rule (it has 3 fewer every 400 years).--Prooffreader (talk) 01:17, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

This was surely meant to distinguish it from other calendar systems such as the Islamic and Hindu calendar, not the Julian calendar. Since it is consistent with both, the current phrasing is not inaccurate. - jerodast (talk) 14:45, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Certain days of the week tend to get their dates mentioned more than others. Since the sample data were from a small number of years, this may be relevant to the results (unless it was controlled for). For example, in the US, elections are always held on a Tuesday, and Thanksgiving is always on a Thursday (and the Friday and Saturday right after it also get mentioned a lot), but these would not be the same numeric dates every year. — |Jonadab the Unsightly One, 2012-Nov-28 9:45pm EST (GMT+0500)

The title only says that the books were published since 2000. The events in the book may have taken place many years before. --Jasqm (talk) 09:37, 29 November 2012 (UTC)jasqm

The last few US Presidential elections were 11/6/2012, 11/4/2008, 11/2/2004, 11/7/2000, 11/5/1996, 11/3/1992. November 1 is writ large, but that seems typical of the first day of all months. November 4 and 5 seem next largest. They correspond to the elections of 2008 (McCain-Obama) and 1996 (Dole-Clinton-Perot).

It seems like some of the dates in the explanation were of minimal importance to the comic - March 15th doesn't seem as large as the 21st or 31st of the month, and Halloween and Kristallnacht aren't that large, either. Sure, it's nice to know, but then there'd have to be explanations for several dozen more days. Bobidou23 (talk) 21:46, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

It is missing 4/20. 70.49.173.75 23:30, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

If you'll notice April, third row, second column from the right. That must be some good stuff you've got if you missed that. lcarsos_a (talk) 01:45, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

I think the language category should include only comics whose joke or topic is about language. Surely, almost all comics and every chart employs language. --St.nerol (talk) 10:59, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

I was curious about August 15th, that is quite larger then its surrounding numbers, so I checked out: only a few noticeable references (to me) in history: - Macbeth's death (1057) - Napoleon's birthday (1769) - WWII Japan Surrender (1945) and, consequently, Korea's Independence Day - India's Independence Day (1947) - and, of course, Woodstock opening (1969) But besides Mary's Assumption (Catholic Feast) I found no significant events since year 2000. Anyone?

Paulo Sedrez 139.82.111.111 18:33, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

The 15th is also a reasonably common "deadline" day, being treated as the halfway point of the month. 70.116.137.237 01:12, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
Not sure if it's relevant for this chart because it's restricted to English books, but August 15th is a holiday in many European countries and it marks the peak of summer holidays: it's the day when most people take leave from work. Dargor17 (talk) 19:13, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Sept. 11th, is also 9/11, which is very similar to 911. Not sure if there's a correlation there. – 24.49.68.40 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

How do you mean?–St.nerol (talk) 21:34, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

I was surprised by April 1st's relatively small size, and Christmas is much smaller than I expected. ‎75.69.96.225 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

About Christmas, it's probably because it's often mentioned by name and not as "the 25th of December" Dargor17 (talk) 19:13, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
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