Talk:2126: Google Trends Maps

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)

Here is an example for the Google Trends on the first example. [1] It looks like he picked last 5 years for that one. There should be a table with links to all of them. 162.158.59.142 17:48, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

For those that find the actual image to be mysteriously missing, that's because the image source URL is https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/a/ad/google_trends_maps.png , and some ad blockers will silently block it because it looks like a path to advertising images. So maybe turn off your adblocker on this site? 172.69.170.64 22:37, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Is it just me, or does the sexting graph look like the midwest is "giving it" to the southeast, with Arkansas and Tennessee playing the naughty bits? I wonder if Randall did this intentionally or if I'm just a perv. 162.158.186.108 01:37, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the best answer to the above is the last line of https://xkcd.com/960/ ;) 172.69.50.52 04:40, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

I feel like "little dog" is most often entered by people searching for unusually small pets, not people wanting to learn about coyotes (which as far as I know are generally just called coyotes). This would still provide an amusing contrast with "big cats" (either the pet or wild versions). --162.158.106.102 06:46, 21 March 2019 (UTC)