Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Guessing competition: name that graph!

I haven't offered any points for quite some time now and don't intend to start up in earnest anytime soon. But as a one-off, I though I would offer this guessing competition. There will be an arbitrary number of points for a correct answer and for most amusing answers. What is this graph representing? And how would you describe the trend?

12 comments:

Jason Goroncy said...

Phone boxes across Europe? (btw: I will donate my points to a charity dedicated to upgrading play equipment in local parks in cities where the council is completely useless)

Archdruid Eileen said...

It's the increasingly autonomous plummet-curve of people booking holidays via travel agents.

Nick said...

Avg monthly ice coverage (in sq kms) of the arctic?
Nick Ingram

Anthony Douglas said...

Total number of people expecting to find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Clear as crystal.

Donna said...

Whatever it is, I hope it's bad, because that means the future is looking pretty bright!

(I would like to donate my points to world peace).

byron smith said...

I'm touched by the generosity of these in principle donations. It will not affect the judging, of course (I'm a little surprised that no one has previously attempted to donate their winning points to me, though perhaps my incorruptibility precedes me...).

Anyway, as I said here, this post and its comments was lost in Blogger's recent failure and so I have reinstated the comments, though this means without photos when I do it myself.

Keep the guesses coming. I'll reveal the answer early next week.

Donna said...

I see that it's seasonal, so:

Average number of people getting sunburnt in beaches around Edinburgh?

Number of people in Alaska who believe that Sarah Palin would make a good president? (It fluctuates due to winter madness).

Number of people on facebook at any given time? (It's less in summer because people are outside enjoying the flowers).

Clutching at straws... ok, so I really think it's ice in the arctic.

BTW, "in priciple" donations! I'm shocked. I think my points can really make a difference!

byron smith said...

Donna - By in principle, I simply meant that the points had not yet been awarded and so promises of generosity are only in principle generosity.

Anonymous said...

The trends are clearly parabolic, even though they are labelled polynomial, which implies contributions from higher order terms.

However, a parabolic model is clearly inappropriate for this kind of data, because if you extrapolate back 40 units (years) in the x direction, you will find the trend lines approaching zero there too, which I am sure is not what you mean to imply. Just sayin'.

byron smith said...

Anon - You may well be right, though I'm more interested in the data itself than the attempt to fit a trend line.

Anonymous said...

Oh that's easy then, it would have to be something like glacier mass balance over time.

byron smith said...

But note the y-axis goes to zero. Glacial mass balance would have a negative y-axis (for example, like this).