There’s no way around it: you’re not going to find the meaning of life in this blog post.

That said, you can see how often people around the globe Google search the meaning of life over time. Why was everyone suddenly so interested in June 2005?

In time series analysis, one is often interested in things like time-domain peaks: is there just one, or many? If many, are the peaks cyclic or is there an explanatory variable they correlate with? Google Trends tells us that “time series” searches peak every October — this likely has to do with upcoming mid-terms during an annual fall semester course.

Be wary of speculation though! The search for “time series analysis” does not have as strong of a time-domain cycle as one might suspect given my hypothesis. Apparently, time series remain fairly popular (especially in October), although analyzing them is becoming  increasingly uncool!

Did you learn the meaning of life? No, but damn it felt good finishing this article!