Wednesday, December 22, 2010

I don't know if Google Fight has been neglected or if I am incapable of interpreting the results; but this result from a fight between Google Fight nad Google Ngram seems wrong; I believe 6,480,000 is more than 104,000, but if it says the opposite on the internet, I must be mistaken.

Google Ngram Viewer was brought to my attention by The Velvet Blog who used it to track the uses of Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holidays vs. Seasons Greetings.

Of course it tracks only the occurrences of the test phrases in books; since book reading is an ancient art, Ngram can't measure any meaningful relative usage in popular culture. Nevertheless, it's interesting to me.

I used it to learn that in the 20s and again in the 60s, Paul Bunyan's popularity was giant compared to John Bunyan, the religious author; now they are relatively equal. John Paul Bunyan has yet to achieve an measure of popularity.

But I was more popular than the Beatles until 1964 and more popular than Elvis until he (supposedly) died.

No comments: