Talk:2126: Google Trends Maps

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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I'm not quite sure I understand the comic. And no, the irony of saying that on a wiki dedicated to explaining them is not lost on me. Do the maps show which word/phrase is more common in google in each state by comparing only the options to each other or where they actually the top searched words/phrases at some point in time?162.158.92.34 10:28, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Pretty sure they're all top searched words/phrases in some states at some point in the past. It's just that Randall has merged maps from different time periods. For example in the first map, "heat stroke" and "frostbite" are two real results, but the former is likely a result that appeared in summer, while the latter is likely one that appeared in winter. By merging the two maps you get a map that doesn't make sense, as it looks like they were the top searches in the same time period while in reality they weren't. Herobrine (talk) 11:04, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
I think that Randall is just clarifying that each map may be showing trends for a different time range (otherwise people might try to compare the maps to each other, which isn't the point of the comic). I don't think he's saying that the individual results in each map are from different time ranges. Hawthorn (talk) 11:30, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, if the results were from different time periods, you could pretty much manipulate them however you want. It would make it much less interesting. Not that statistician don't already manipulate data in any way possible...Linker (talk) 16:51, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

From what it looks like, these are year-long averages. Netherin5 (talk) 12:17, 20 March 2019 (UTC)