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June 28th, 2009

UPDATE: Vitamin D?

I told Becky about the “ringing ears” chart, and when the waves peaked.

She said, “Maybe it’s related to Vitamin D.” Indeed, the searches peak around the nadir of Vitamin D availability in the Northern Hemisphere.

—End Update—

I’m developing some tools on another website—partially to help me keep track of information in a more effective manner—and I started messing around with Google Trends.

I was punching in various queries, just to have a fiddle around.

Then the phone rang. Becky answered it.

I typed in ringing phone. Then ringing bell. Then ringing ears. I have no idea what I was looking for, but look at this chart for ringing ears:

Is that weird?

Most of these charts look like a noise floor, with occasional news driven spikes. I looked at tinnitus, the clinical term for “ringing in the ears” and when I combined the chart from that with the one above, there’s a general correlation, as one would expect. (CSV datasets from all of these queries may be downloaded if you want to perform actual correlation calculations instead of just eyeballing it with the boneheaded charts Google is using.)

Next, I tried one with obvious seasonal correlates: gardening. That chart looks exactly as one would expect. Hay fever works the same way.

Are there seasonal correlates to tinnitus? I didn’t think so, but I’m definitely no expert. It seems to spike around the end of the year. Maybe it’s from listing to that Christmas music in China Mart.

What other queries describe sine waves, but without apparent seasonal or other correlates?

Posted in Technology Top Of Page