stevestory
Posts: 13407
Joined: Oct. 2005
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Uncommonly Dense:
| Quote | June 15, 2006
Google trends for searching on “intelligent design”
The following Google graph shows trends for searches on “intelligent design”: http://www.google.com/trends?....te=all. Click on the “regions” tab. It shows that Australia has about half the searches for ID that the US does. Given that Australia’s population is about 20 million, that means that if the US population is 250 million, Australia searches for ID on average 6 times more per person than does the US. And given that Denmark has only a quarter of the population of Australia, Danes must be searching for ID >20 times more than Americans. International interest in ID is growing.
Filed under: Intelligent Design — William Dembski @ 10:01 pm
7 Comments »
1.
My impression, looking at the diagram: public interest in Dover-Trial rised searching for id on google. Now the interest is on the same level as before.
Did I get anything wrong?
Comment by El Schwalmo — June 16, 2006 @ 1:39 am
2.
Philadelphia tops the list.
I think there may be a punchline in there somewhere.
Comment by tribune7 — June 16, 2006 @ 8:39 am
3.
Well, whatever the reality behind the overseas interest, why should all those sophisticates across the sea be offended when ID is associated with American morality, patriotism and antipathy to terrorism? Aren’t others mature enough to evaluate the logic of things on their own merits? Doesn’t doubting Darwin and determining design have any roots outside Anglo-Saxondom? What about Pierre-Paul Grasse, Marcel-Paul Schützenberger, Giuseppe Sermonti, and others I forget? Even if the overseas audience peaks when ID looks to be in trouble–at least they’re interested!
Comment by Rude — June 16, 2006 @ 9:54 am
4.
Dave, you might want to read the section explaining how Google Trends works:
“When the Cities tab is selected, Google Trends first looks at a sample of all Google searches to determine the cities from which we received the most searches for your first term. Then, for those top cities, Google Trends calculates the ratio of searches for your term coming from each city divided by total Google searches coming from the same city. The city ranking you see on the page and the bar charts alongside each city name both represent this ratio. When cities’ ratios are fairly close together, the corresponding bar graphs will be roughly the same length, and the exact ranking between these cities is less meaningful.”
What you’re looking at is not a number of searches for Intelligent Design, but rather a percentage of all searches that are for Intelligent Design.
Why are you telling me this? You might want to read the author’s name before replying to him or her. -ds
Comment by Tiax — June 16, 2006 @ 10:26 am
5.
Agree. Interest on ID is more and more growing in Europe even in presence of the classical behavior by ND people. For example, now in Italy people can get adequate information about ND weakeness and ID arguments from several internet sites and newspaper articles, mainly by Catholic people who are more and more interested in ID arguments.
K
Comment by kairos — June 16, 2006 @ 10:35 am
6.
I think you may be mistaken, Dr. Dembski:
It says the regions are normalized (like the cities): “Google Trends calculates the ratio of searches for your term coming from each city divided by total Google searches coming from the same city. The city ranking you see on the page and the bar charts alongside each city name both represent this ratio.”
So if Australia is half of the US, that means that it has half the US’s ratio of ID searches/Google searches, which makes it pretty independent of the size of the country.
Am I correct here?
Comment by ThePolynomial — June 16, 2006 @ 1:41 pm
7.
Check out the Thumb.  You repeated the calculation that Google does - they already normalize it for the population. (So your result is divided by their population twice) The >20 times interest in Denmark should have been the clue to that fact. It seems that since KvD, interest has been declining internationally. I just talked to an Australian scientist and author, and they’re all pretty aware of the KvD results, and it came as no surprise to them down there.
Comment by Inoculated Mind — June 16, 2006 @ 2:06 pm
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Pharyngula:
| Quote | So, um, Dembski is a mathematician?
Category: Creationism
Posted on: June 16, 2006 1:55 PM, by PZ Myers
He must be one of those very abstract types who never looks at data, doesn't understand statistics, and has never heard of the word "normalized." In a post that is a microcosmic analog of the whole Intelligent Design paradigm, Dembski completely bungles an analysis of Google searches to conclude that "international interest in ID is growing." Andrea Bottaro shows that he screwed up thoroughly, and the conclusion is actually the reverse.
I wonder if Dembski will acknowledge the correction, and admit that international interest in ID is negligible or declining? Or will his mistake mysteriously disappear from his web page? Anyone want to place any bets?
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| Quote | This is great. I just finished publishing a GM/BM post on how some of Dembski's recent writings have convinced me that he does not actually understand math; and as soon as I'm done posting it, I see this on Pharyngula and PT - demonstrating even less of an understanding of basic mathematics than I could have imagined.
Posted by: Mark C. Chu-Carroll [TypeKey Profile Page] | June 16, 2006 03:22 PM | |
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