Happy Palindrome \nDay! Happy Ground Hog Day! Happy Candlemas Day! Happy Midway between \nWinter and Spring Day! Happy 33rd Day of the New Year with 333 Days to \nGo! Happy Superbowl Sunday!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Probably like you, most of\n those designations of today I don’t intend to celebrate but they are \nfascinating to me that someone, somewhere noticed a pattern. I bet \nyou’ve noticed patterns in your genealogy research, too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When\n discovering information about a newly discovered relative I’m always \nstruck by the significance of a date I find. Hmm, I think, that person \nmarried on my birthday. Wow, that ancestor was born on my anniversary. \n Seems like such a weird coincidence but mathematically, it’s not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Think\n about this – there are usually 365 days in a year (except for the few \nyears like this one which is a Leap Year). If you’re comparing days of \nsimilarities between a newly found ancestor and your own vital dates, \nyou’re actually increasing the odds. Think of it this way, you’re \ncomparing your birthday and marriage to someone else’s birthday, \nmarriage and death date. When I think about adding in dates for my \nclose family, such as my spouse, children, parents, grandparents, aunts \nand uncles, it’s not a coincidence at all that dates are shared. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you’ve noticed this phenomenon and want to do the math yourself, check out this statistic site: Same Birthday Odds<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\n wish I had time, however, to actually compute seasonal births and \ndeaths in my direct lines. Although I could be wrong, it seems like \nthere are more births in the spring\/summer and more deaths in the \nfall\/winter. My mom was the first to make me aware of this family trend\n when my grandfather died in October 1970. I asked her why that \noccurred and she said she didn’t know but had drawn that conclusion \nbased on her grandparents’ deaths in winter and knowing she attended \nmore funerals during those seasons. I guess that stuck with me and as \nI’ve tabulated vital data for my family I see what she means. Both my \nparents died in the fall; most of my grandparents and great grandparents\n did, too. Only my paternal grandfather (August) and maternal \ngrandmother (June) didn’t follow the death pattern. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Then I came across a study that looked at data from a developing country<\/a> and found that the trend was true. Then I found another<\/a> to support the first study but a different one showed variations by country<\/a>. I also found an interesting study that showed, in the U.S., people who were born in the fall had a significant increase in living longer<\/a> than those born in the first half of the year. Who knew?!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since\n the next palindrome day won’t occur for 101 years (12\/12\/2121) I’ve \ndecided I’m putting aside my genealogical research on this sunny cold \nday and savoring the moment! Looking backwards can wait another day. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 02\/02\/2020 Happy Palindrome Day! Happy Ground Hog Day! Happy Candlemas Day! Happy Midway between Winter and Spring Day! Happy 33rd Day of the New Year with 333 Days to Go! Happy Superbowl Sunday! Probably like you, most of those designations of today I don’t intend to celebrate but they are fascinating to me that someone, … Continue reading “Genealogical Patterns – Are They Meaningful?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[798,523,799,803,656,797,802,800,801],"class_list":["post-1365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trends-and-musings","tag-candlemas","tag-coincidence","tag-ground-hog","tag-leap-year","tag-longevity","tag-palindrome","tag-statistic","tag-superbowl","tag-vital"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1366,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365\/revisions\/1366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}