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A cool guide to birth commonality

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A cool guide to birth commonality

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A cool guide to birth commonality

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  • Also discovered something crazy about birthdays when it comes to athletics and competitive sports.

    An athletes chance of success are based on what month they are born. Depending on the sport, region and organizations and systems involved ... if an athlete is born earlier in the year and the rank they are placed in starts at the beginning of the year, they have a better chance because they will almost be a year older than the player born at the end of the year. In Junior leagues or youth divisions at 10 years of age to 18 ... a year makes a huge difference in the players.

    I learned all of this from talking to a few individuals who went through provincial level hockey in Ontario.

    When it comes to the top level sports ... what month you are born really matters.

    • This matters in education too. Malcolm Gladwell did a bit of a study on it.

      Makes sense though. In anything that is segregated by year, the oldest in one cohort is going to have nearly a full year more development than the youngest.

  • The high period before/after Christmas so that more of the medical community can have Christmas off is pretty strong.

    I have no idea why August has such a strong weekly cycle, when July/September aren't that clear. I mean... surely weekend vs. weekday is canceled out by having multiple years that people are born in. If someone knows, I'd love to hear the answer.

    • The color scale hugely amplifies minor differences, see my other comment. In the dataset, 15 years (2000-2014) are represented and the weekly cycle is therefore present. This could have been mitigated by using a 28-year dataset. Here is how often each month started on a given day in the dataset. We don't have colored text so I used emoji.

      01/ JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC
      SUN 2➖ 2➖ 1🔻 3⚠️ 2➖ 3⚠️ 3⚠️ 2➖ 2➖ 2➖ 1🔻 2➖
      MON 2➖ 1🔻 2➖ 2➖ 2➖ 1🔻 2➖ 2➖ 3⚠️ 3⚠️ 2➖ 3⚠️
      TUE 3⚠️ 3⚠️ 2➖ 3⚠️ 3⚠️ 2➖ 3⚠️ 2➖ 1🔻 2➖ 2➖ 1🔻
      WED 2➖ 2➖ 2➖ 1🔻 2➖ 2➖ 1🔻 3⚠️ 2➖ 3⚠️ 2➖ 2➖
      THU 2➖ 2➖ 3⚠️ 2➖ 3⚠️ 2➖ 2➖ 2➖ 2➖ 1🔻 3⚠️ 2➖
      FRI 1🔻 3⚠️ 2➖ 2➖ 1🔻 3⚠️ 2➖ 3⚠️ 2➖ 2➖ 2➖ 2➖
      SAT 3⚠️ 2➖ 3⚠️ 2➖ 2➖ 2➖ 2➖ 1🔻 3⚠️ 2➖ 3⚠️ 3⚠️

      Here is how likely any date is to be Monday-Friday in the data (out of 15):

      How often Mon-Fri JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC
      01/08/15/22/29 10🔻 11➖ 11➖ 10🔻 11➖ 10🔻 10🔻 12⚠️ 10🔻 11➖ 11➖ 10🔻
      02/09/16/23/30 11➖ 12⚠️ 12⚠️ 10🔻 11➖ 11➖ 10🔻 11➖ 10🔻 10🔻 12⚠️ 10🔻
      03/10/17/24/31 10🔻 11➖ 11➖ 10🔻 10🔻 12⚠️ 10🔻 11➖ 11➖ 10🔻 11➖ 11➖
      04/11/18/25 10🔻 10🔻 11➖ 11➖ 10🔻 11➖ 11➖ 10🔻 12⚠️ 10🔻 11➖ 12⚠️
      05/12/19/26 11➖ 11➖ 10🔻 12⚠️ 10🔻 11➖ 12⚠️ 10🔻 11➖ 11➖ 10🔻 11➖
      06/13/20/27 12⚠️ 10🔻 10🔻 11➖ 11➖ 10🔻 11➖ 10🔻 11➖ 12⚠️ 10🔻 11➖
      07/14/21/28 11➖ 10🔻 10🔻 11➖ 12⚠️ 10🔻 11➖ 11➖ 10🔻 11➖ 10🔻 10🔻

      You can see for example that August 01/08/15/22/29 is 10-20% more likely to be a workday than other days, which corresponds to the extra births. Feb 29 cannot be read directly from this table; its value is 3 out of 4 (2000: Tue, 2004: Sun, 2008: Fri, 2012: Wed).

      As for your question: every month has approximately the same strength of the weekly cycle, it's just that the prevailing colors in July-September show them the most. August's is more visible because it does not have the disrupting July 4 and September 11.

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