Google Ngram Viewer...

[JackRiddler]

Totally addictive.

Yeah, that one and citizen,consumer almost make the books themselves superfluous.

Also, John was wrong. Or he would have been if he had meant it literally, anyway.

Yeah but look at the long term:

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Yeah, Bowie = David, who has apparently slightly over run a favored piano composer, Johannes Brahms.
What to do? What to do?

The only valid response is to dance. Put on your red shoes and dance the blues.

[Nordic]

The Bowie Knife.

[Nordic]

This thread should be in GD. It's really fascinating. Jingo, thanks for narrowing down the communist/terrorist one. That's really interesting.

[JackRiddler]

You put in a The (capital) for Orthodox Church, so that's going to be a flat zero.

Hope you won't think it's pedantic to point out the limits and the common problems in using this tool. The English section is of course all Anglosphere or translated for the Anglosphere. It only includes what Google Books has scanned and OCR'ed. Presumably, that's weighted toward academic and literary books. Also, there will be a delay between a subject becoming big in public discourse before it peaks in book references. Here's an example:




You have to consider which of the possible terms is going to occur most often to refer to something, or which terms are comparable. Example: How often will "Protestantism" occur as a reference to Protestants? Probably less often than Islam occurs in reference to Muslims. How often will Protestants be called Baptists, F/fundamentalists, Anglicans, etc.?

Then there's the meaning of each. Protestant being mentioned less often than Islam, for example, shows only which is most an obsession to Anglosphere writers at a given time, although the writers themselves will be overwhelmingly Protestant at most times under consideration.

Some examples that should illustrate the difficulties of approaching this rigorously:









So it's very easy to skew things however you like:

Yes! Greeks rule!

[JackRiddler]

Then again, it's just fun...



However, keeping in mind Elvis Presley is at the top of the chart above, look at this (and weep) :



Then again:



There's only one Oprah, really, but we need to control for different Elvises:



Conclusive. Still only one King.

.

[JackRiddler]

In the following using first name for Walt, to disaggregate him from his company:



More bad news about the fate of mankind:



Above suspicious because it's another one with a sudden shift after 2000, indicating that they may not have representative samples of more recent years. Also, if you try singular for extraterrestrial, it's again completely different.

This tool will be abused something fierce in next year's social science journals, and probably be absent by 2015.

.

PS - Even more bad news! Look what happens even after I threw in "pollution" as the most generic possible real problem in the world.

[JackRiddler]

[JackRiddler]

If only he'd lived to see this!

[JackRiddler]

I've got to stop now.

[Stephen Morgan]

[Project Willow]

[Laodicean]

Woot! Soul Power!

[Allegro]

.
Hey there, JackR. Thank you for all the helps and examples and for the time to write it all out. As I kept experimenting, I ended up with a stack of about a gazillion diagrams many of which got tossed prior to my original post. I was getting the hang of it too slowly, and you cleared up a whole lot of questions I didn’t know to ask.

And Thank You for the tips, c2w, a voice who’s always GREAT to hear.

Ahab, I’ve pulled out the shoes, readied the Bach and Bowie CD series, tossed the blues outta the house, and rolled back the carpets! Anda one, anda two…

Thanks to Stephan for revealing the ngram. My measures to subdue the addictiveness to that web page haven’t played out as wished.

To All the Very Best.
~ A.

[JackRiddler]

Allegro, pleased to be of service and thank you for the kind words.

Putting Elvis in Context

No. 1s: Peak Napoleon, 1850; Peak Hitler, 1940; Peak Marx, 1980; Peak Freud, 1996; in present-day jumble, Victoria appears to be current #1.

Same in Spanish, Swapping Bolivar for Victoria and Guevera for Elvis

The Spanish seem to have gotten over Napoleon much earlier; Peak Hitler is not as impressive; Marx Rules!

Take Heart - This Is the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius