This is cute too. I suggest, in addition:
1. Plotting the y-axis on the log scale.
2. Normalizing by total number of words (of, if that’s hard to find, something easier such as total number of articles).
This is cute too. I suggest, in addition:
1. Plotting the y-axis on the log scale.
2. Normalizing by total number of words (of, if that’s hard to find, something easier such as total number of articles).
I'm suspicious about these–it would be more convincing if there were an example of some alternative fad on the rise. The number of journals rises every year, but it takes a few years for the articles to become available in JSTOR. Would "rational choice" or "equilibrium" or "heuristics" show the same trends?
Given the similarity in these graphs and our understanding that research and publishing have increased dramatically in recent decades, this doesn't mean much without implementing your second suggestion. Otherwise, you could alternately suggest that perhaps publishing overall has dropped. While intuitively we suspect that not to be true, that's no substitute for testing…
You can see some rising trends here: (heritability, evo psych, cognitive ability)
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/10/trends-in-so…
Keep in mind it's not my data or my analysis. The stuff originally appeared on gnxp.com