The project I explored was called the Rhythm of Food. This project was focused on google searches for different food items and how they fluctuated throughout the year and from year to year. It shows that some food, fluctuates by season while others fluctuate based on their physical location. There is tons of interesting graphics showing trends around different holidays that aren’t obvious. If you want to check it out here is the link: http://rhythm-of-food.net
The creators of this website got their data from Google searches performed over a 15 year period. Their main focus is finding out which foods are most popular at the different times of the year and what sorts of things cause them to fluctuate in and out of popularity. I think that this is super interesting and gives you a look into foods eaten at different times of the year. I think that this could be useful to many restaurants, because they could begin to implement seasonal dishes or focus more on dishes that are popular in searches in order to maximize their business and satisfy their customers.
I think this project is involved in many different fields including statistics, computer science, business, and economics. The data side of this project relates directly to statistics as it is analyzing the popularity of the searches for these food items. Computer science is related because of the visual aspect as well as the method of data collection. The business and economic aspect of this project are more so related to what we can gather from the results, what we should sell at what time or year and how much to charge for it.
The goal of this project is to bring to light hidden trends in food related Google searches and to analyze what they can tell about us. For example, the graphics show that in January people try to eat healthy and common searches are “diet” and “smoothie”. This also helps to understand consumer trends with food and understand the background information to see what other foods might also be popular around that time.
