Relationship Status: Recorded
January 25, 2012
The technology addiction epidemic to which our nation has yet to acknowledge does have a few upsides… especially for the data gatherers of the world. Even Facebook is useful, since most people update their “relationship status” regularly (I’ve never done it, but I’m old so that’s no big surprise). Here is a graph showing which days of the year breakups are most common. It looks almost exactly as I expected it to – with the peaks in the (literal) darkest time of the year (holiday season) and at the end of the long dark grey and grueling winter. The best days for relationships are those glorious late summer months of walks on the beach and thunderstorms. Here’s the source if you want to read more about breakups.
I tried to find a similar graph that rated people’s “happiness” over the course of a year as well, but I didn’t find a good one (and I spent a whole five minutes looking). I did, however, find this site that showed that people in colder countries are happier than those in warmer countries, in contrast to the seasonal trends we see for the breakup graph. The site connects this with the fact that colder countries are richer than warmer countries. From other reading I’ve done, income appears to have an effect on happiness level until the point of basic needs being consistenetly met (food & shelter) and then tapers off again as we seek to get ever richer.
But if you love statistics and fancy graphs, as well as silliness, the ultimate site for you is OK Trends, which is associated with the free dating site OK Cupid. Lots of interesting stuff there, from dating and sex graphs to “The Mathematics of Attractiveness,” which postulates that it’s better to have looks that elicit extreme reactions (some people think you’re a 2 but on average you’re a 7 because some people think you’re hot) than to just have everyone think you are a “pretty good looking” 7. Sadly it seems to have ground to a halt as far as new entries go, but there’s still tons to see. Enjoy!
