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I was about to ask why the word "equation" is trending upwards since 1960 even though the related words "equations" (plural) has not. It also doesn't exactly t

by jasode 12y ago

I was about to ask why the word "equation" is trending upwards since 1960 even though the related words "equations" (plural) has not. It also doesn't exactly track the word "mathematics". But after I added the word "music", it reminded me that the Y axis shows "equation" at less than 1%. I suppose that's within the realm of random noise insofar as word count statistics. Maybe NYT had the odd mix of staff writers that happen to use "equation" more often in the journalism that's unrelated to any larger cultural context. http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=equation.mathematics.music.equations http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=equation.mathematics.m... (unclick "music")

discostrings 12y ago
Perhaps non-mathematical usage of "equation" in phrases like "entered the equation" and "wasn't part of the equation" has been increasing? I certainly hear it in conversation often enough, but I've never taken note of how frequently it's written.
- jasode 12y ago
  Yes, that seems possible. The Google Books Ngram Viewer doesn't have any hits for "enter the equation". However, the word "equation" and "equations" have the opposite trend from NYT.[1] But to emphasize again, the hits are less than .01% which is potentially abusing the word "trend". [1]https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=equation%2Cequations%2C+music&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cequation%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cequations%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cmusic%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=equation%2Cequ...
eevilspock 12y ago
actually, both "equation" and "equations" trend up, just not at the same rate. Look at them independently.