How Common is your Birthday?

How common is your birthday?

(via explore / The Atlantic)

36 Comments leave a comment below

  1. Interesting how February 14 stands out in an otherwise less common month. I’m wondering if couples with due dates +/- say 3 days of Feb 14 choose to have their baby delivered on Feb 14 to have a Valentine’s Day baby.

    (Tina, please note that I know Tilo was born in February 14 and I’m in no way insinuating you did that! Just an observation from this visual chart.)

  2. Odd, I thought I had read statistics that Oct 5th were some of the most common birth dates since it falls right around 9 months after New Years Eve.

    Oddly enough I have 3 uncles with birthdays all around that time…

  3. At first I was going “it’s so weird how so many of the 31st’s have no births!” Then I was embarrassed.

  4. This reminds me of a poem I wrote about Virgos “How can I forget? I must always remember, I must avoid all boys born in September!” Its a pretty full month! No wonder most of them were Virgos.

  5. sooo many people get it in on in December! poor September babies it’s not their faults!

  6. that is really crazy that you’ve posted this on my birthday: may 16!

  7. I see everyone started new years off with a “Bang”

  8. Does this represent global statistics? You’d think the hemispheres would have different trends based on seasonal differences in…er, behaviour. This is really interesting!

  9. (Just looked it up! It’s solely based on US data!)

  10. I love that my birthday, January 11, is less common yet I know way too many people that I share the day with. Enough to make it slightly less special.

  11. Weirdest of all… How common is Feb 29th, once every four years and as much as many other dates!!!

  12. Looks like July to Sep is the heavy birth period of the year. If you push back 9 months, can we say that people tend to stay warm at home and make baby during early winter time?

  13. I notice the horizontal band of fewer-births on the 13th! Not sure where the data come from, but perhaps people actually born on the 13th report their birthdays as being on the 12th or the 14th? Best wishes to all.

  14. It seems like July 4th and 5th are very uncommon birthdays. Is there some way that people actively avoid having a baby on 4th of July?

  15. same graph about couple versus sex. I’d bet that January would be BLACK based on the common birth date around September.

    Jan = Sex
    Sep = Sex will never “look” the same anymore..

  16. It gets cold, and we want to be next to someone.

  17. I always noticed this pattern in school every time the “birthday party season” was near.

  18. And yet there are Halloween birthday cards. I know because I get them every year. ;-)

  19. OMG! I’m absolutely normal !!!!!!

  20. Look at July 4th…the one empty spot in a month of birthdays. As soon as I saw that I guessed it was only using US data! My guess is that people who can (C-sections/induction?) avoid delivering on that day because of the holiday.

  21. Ann M. – Funny that you write that. I’m a Jan 11 baby too!

  22. How interesting! I meet lots of October-born people, but rarely people with my exact birthdate: October 16.

  23. Yup, I can see the influence of the medicalization of birthing through those stats… What are the odds, statistically, that (unscheduled, unprovoked) birth rate is so much lower during the holidays? Lots of C-sections, of doctors saying “I won’t be there for your birth if we don’t induce”, of “Your birth/pregnancy is taking too long, we have to intervene” in there. Proof? More C-sections of Fridays and around 5PM than any other time in the week/day. Somebody wants to have their evenings and weekends free, I guess.

  24. Amazing how many people avoid the holidays somehow. July 4, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas are very light compared to the days around them. But Valentine’s Day and St Patricks day are a little bit darker. Very interesting…

  25. Is all the data from the northern hemisphere?

  26. This should be divided by hemisphere, as intercourse patterns likely change when the weather is sunny and people can go out versus when it is snowy… and there’s nothing else to do.

  27. I am laughing at the people who think the WOMEN/BABIES are choosing not to birth on holidays! It’s not “amazing” how people avoid holidays…birth in this country is sadly medicalized when it comes to when a woman is “due.”

  28. Interesting… Notice how much darker it gets just from May to July? Fascinating. My birthday isn’t common at all…
    May 30

  29. I like how the days leading up to the end of the year are pretty dark, taxes anyone? haha

  30. Interesting, I didn’t think there’d be this drastic of a pattern.
    The big drop in births on July 4-5 says something about americans, if something was put together of canadian births I don’t think there’d be as big of a drop for July 1st.

  31. So, December and Janurary. People gotta stay warm.

  32. I wonder how northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere charts would compare – Southern New Year’s is in peak of summer and September is a common birth month.

  33. May 1 !!!

  34. Me and my would be husband share a common birthday .Do you know anyone with the same?

  35. I have the same birthday as my friend. How weird is that. But I was born a minute before him. So I would die and a minute later he would too.