this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2024
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[–] prime_number_314159 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

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.