Friday, November 09, 2012

Online obscurity...


The US electorate were not over enamoured by either candidate, 90 million didn't vote, a whacking 10 million more than last time; and "They’re not undecided - they’re completely uninformed".You have to laugh otherwise you'd cry: seems hard to believe but that saying didn't appear from nothing: sometimes it really is true. Paul (One Page In A Library of Millions) brings to our attention the article from Fox News that begs the question just what the hell goes through the minds of your average U.S. American. Looking at the graph below (from Google search HERE) we see a chart from Google Trends showing the continental US numbers for the search of the term "who is running for president" (since 2004). Jeez, the known unknowns.

5 comments:

Paul said...

Thanks for the link. The blue/red covered map of the States that is on various websites makes interesting reading doesn't it?

Span Ows said...

Very, must be something top do with ocean water! :-)

Anonymous said...

Sorry, intuitively this must be wrong.

The graph states 100 is the highest number to return?

Enter sex or porn and you get similar results.

Suggest interpretation/use of data by you is incorrect. Maybe some testing of the source data otherwise you get relegated to the leagues including Newsnight and This Morning!

Regards, Kenji

Span Ows said...

Hey Kenji! Hope all is well. You may be right; it certainly looks odd: Google Trends state that "The number 100 represents the peak search volume".

Leagues including Newsnight...isn't that now the doghouse? :-)

Paul said...

This has been queried before and the answer given on one scientific based research board was "Yes. Data on google trends is accurate, though normalized. Google does not show the raw data (actual numbers of searches), but only the magnitude/ trends and peaks. As you mentioned."

It seems to me that all trends are therefore measured as a percentage of 100, you can't get higher unless you are a Premier League player who gives 110% every time.