Visual Correlations: War on Summer

Google trends is a powerful resource to see what is going on in the internet search world. For example, let us look at the search volume index of Summer and War over the past seven years (presented in the line graph below).

Figure 1. Search Volume Index versus Time for the search terms "War" and "Summer". Data collected from Google Trends(c) on May 18th, 2010.

Anyone notice anything of interest? As the Summer searches ramp up, the War searches begin to diminish. The trough of War searches occurs just a little bit after the Summer searches. Therefore, there may exist a small search association between Summer and War. Maybe while we are thinking about summer we would rather not think about wars? Vacations inhibit hostility?

Also of interest are the overall trends...

Figure 2. Search Volume Index versus Time for the search terms "War" and "Summer". Linear trendlines and relevant parameters are added to the graph. Data collected from Google Trends(c) on May 18th, 2010.

Note that it appears the overall search in War has been decreasing faster than the overall interest in Summer. It will be interesting to see how this trend progresses in the future. Maybe as a society we are becoming more interested in leisure than fighting?

I think I'll continue to follow up on these for a bit...