Life In 19x19

Page hits history for en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game), as shown on Wolfram Alpha after entering “Baduk” (linear scale), screenshot taken on 2016-03-09, 01:36 CET, added the arrows and text.
I just thought this was interesting.

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Correction: The last peak was, of course, after the announcement of the victory over Fan Hui and the new game schedule vs. Lee Sedol …

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What happened around Thanksgiving 2014?

And how do you get that information?

DrStraw wrote:What happened around Thanksgiving 2014?

Uhm, WHEN? You mean end of 2014, for people outside the US bubble? No idea, good question.

And how do you get that information?

Uhm … what information do you mean? Did you click my 2nd link? Do you know Wolfram Alpha?

Yes, I am familiar with Wolfram. In fact, as I type I am multitasking writing Mathematica code.

What I meant was, is the hit rate available directly form Wikepedia? Your graph was linear and the Wolfram graph is logarithmic, so you presumably had another source.

Something looks fishy about that data. I'd guess the spike in interest based on the recent AlphaGo news is accurately captured, but I have difficulty thinking of a scenario that causes the Go page to have a sustained number of hits that falls off so quickly at the end of 2014. I guess it's possible, but it seems odd.

Still, thanks for sharing! It's nice to have some numbers to back up the anecdotal spike in popular interest many have noted.

I think Jubango (Lee vs Gu) was happening in 2014, right?

I doubt the jubango would make such a big difference. I suspect it is something more artificial, such as the word Go on wikipedia linking directly to the Go (game) page rather than a disambiguation page for some time, or something like that.

Was Hikaru no go anime broadcasted somewhere from 2012 to 2014? That might explain it.

It doesn't correlate with the trend from Google Trends. Type in Go into Google Trends and the game is the 3rd autocomplete option. There is a specific option for it.

They show an increase around 2008 and a steady decline since then with stabilisation around 2013.

DrStraw wrote:Yes, I am familiar with Wolfram. In fact, as I type I am multitasking writing Mathematica code.

Oh, cool (and I should’ve thought so, actually) … I had Mathematica on the NeXTcube in one of my former lives but sadly was too busy with other things to dive deeper into it.

What I meant was, is the hit rate available directly form Wikepedia?

Just go to that link in the opening post, you’ll see. The Wikipedia link below the graph leads to a Wikipedia page with number instead of characters, and it is the “Go (game)” page, so I assume the number is the Wiki-internal “absolute” name for the page.

Your graph was linear and the Wolfram graph is logarithmic, so you presumably had another source.

If you visit the page you will see that the layout is somewhat misleading — the button is a toggle switch and always shows the name of the other representation.