Comments on: If Birth Season Matters… Another Possibility Why

By: Nurse Grace

Nurse Grace — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 05:17:03 +0000

Stevie, probably because the kids born in January are older than the other kids. Malcolm Gladwell talks about this in one of his books – I forget which one.

By: bob

bob — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 01:03:16 +0000

Then what was the point of this post, Sheril?

By: jennifer

jennifer — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:04:23 +0000

really? a parent’s emotional state affects a baby? this is a new discovery?

By: Stevie

Stevie — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:03:32 +0000

I will mention one thing , and that is that it always seemed that way back , when I was in school, it always seemed that kids born early in the year always seemed to have a leg up on everyone else. They were always perseived as Older , and seemed to get a lot more attention from teachers . My best bud, Bill, back in the day, was born early in the year ( i was Born the end of October ) He got his Driver’s liciense before anyone else, and was immediately ” upwardly moble, socially. He became my friend, not because I liked himso much as I liked his car , and going places , and meeting girls. An evolutionary advantage ? You Bet 111

By: Marion Delgado

Marion Delgado — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 08:02:04 +0000

There’s another issue to be brought up in this and the other post, Sheril: are these so-called bayesian inferences, or frequentist statistics, or neither?

By: Sheril Kirshenbaum

Sheril Kirshenbaum — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 02:53:37 +0000

Yes, and as I wrote when I initially blogged about the birth season study, correlations don’t really prove much.

By: Sven DiMilo

Sven DiMilo — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:08:26 +0000

It’s silly to jump to the conclusion that the search rate for the word “depression” has anything to do with the searchers’ “emotional state.” Somebody on the original thread suggested the more parsimonious interpretation that the graph merely depicts the academic year and students researching psych, history, and/or economics assignments.

By: Guy

Guy — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:03:57 +0000

Interesting.

I have a smaller sample of four brothers and three sisters. Here’s how the birthdays and level of achievement break down.

1st, January, High IQ, Well-educated, fairly successful.
2nd, September, Average IQ, Working class, large family, somewhat successful.
3rd, November, Below Average IQ (minor genetic retardation), Struggling to get by.
4th, October, Average IQ (mental health issues), Working class, Struggling
5th, February, High IQ, Well-educated, fairly successful.
6th, October, Average IQ, Working class, large family, somewhat successful.
7th, May, Average IQ, Working class, Struggling.

By: Kin

Kin — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 20:51:04 +0000

Dennis, it is not a graph of depression rates.

It is a graph of search terms, how often people search certain terms.

Check out google trends. google.com/trends

By: Sheril Kirshenbaum

Sheril Kirshenbaum — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 20:49:47 +0000

@3 Dennis,
It merely reflects the number of google searches for the word ‘depression’ over time..