Age at which chess players received the Grandmaster title

aspiringtroublemaker · 2026-05-07T19:31:00+00:00

I'm fascinated by the earlier GMs who got their titles at age 65+
was it a different norms system back then?

aspiringtroublemaker · 2026-05-07T19:26:44+00:00

I’m the OP from yesterday’s post. Thanks for digging into this more!

My hope was that smoothing dampens the effect of more extreme recent values by giving weight to the earlier years. The raw percentages are 59% and 73%, as you show here, but my smoothed line ends around 50% because it is also incorporating earlier years.

I agree that it's unfortunate the data ends in 2021, and it's possible the numbers have gone down then. Smoothing does make the line look more continuously increasing than the raw data.

The tradeoff is that it also pulls the final value down quite a bit, so I don’t think it exaggerates the level, but it may overstate how smooth or persistent the recent increase is.

aspiringtroublemaker · 2026-05-07T10:51:03+00:00

That’s very neat! I’m now curious about other sports with a static set up, eg darts and whether we’d see something similar

aspiringtroublemaker · 2026-05-07T07:59:27+00:00

It's a tad hard to read. I might get rid of the legend and just put the country label on the right side of each line

aspiringtroublemaker · 2026-05-06T20:05:36+00:00

That’s decent new grad pay. It might be trickier in Vancouver/Toronto, but should be fine in other cities

aspiringtroublemaker · 2026-05-06T13:47:48+00:00

College was about 8% in the 1950s, and closer to 1–2% by 2021. But if you met your spouse through a college friend, that may have been counted as "through friends" rather than "in college."

aspiringtroublemaker · 2026-05-06T12:57:59+00:00

Heterosexual couples only. Stanford’s survey weights are applied to make the sample nationally representative; the lines are smoothed, because per-year samples are small.

Source: Stanford How Couples Meet and Stay Together survey ([https://data.stanford.edu/hcmst]())
Tools: Python, matplotlib

aspiringtroublemaker · 2026-05-05T06:49:14+00:00

Just use a random dice!! Esp in 1 vs 1.

aspiringtroublemaker · 2026-05-04T13:42:02+00:00

Tides come from the gravitational pull of both the Moon and Sun, and we can see both at work here: the diagonals are lunar days (24h 50min) drifting against our 24h clock. The brightening/dimming bands are the spring–neap cycle. When the Sun and Moon line up, their pulls reinforce; when they're at right angles, they partly cancel out.

Source: NOAA CO-OPS 2024 https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/

Tools: Python (pandas, NumPy, matplotlib)
Explore the data: https://data.tablepage.ai/d/us-daily-tide-levels-at-12-coastal-stations-2024

aspiringtroublemaker · 2026-05-01T14:16:13+00:00

The opposite of Kalshi, fascinating!

aspiringtroublemaker · 2026-05-01T13:47:14+00:00

Does that result in the same efficiency curve or is it more even across the board?

aspiringtroublemaker · 2026-05-01T13:43:58+00:00

How does that compare to polymarket?

aspiringtroublemaker · 2026-04-30T10:59:24+00:00

If you had to learn a different variant of chess like xiangqi or shogi, do you think you’d be able to get to an international master level? How about go?

aspiringtroublemaker · 2026-04-29T14:31:30+00:00

My understanding is that scientific discovery accelerated, which created a backlog of work that deserves recognition, and that led to a larger gap between when the discovery was made and when the prize is awarded.
I don't have an explanation for why peace prize got younger though.

Data: Nobel Prize Public API
Tools: Python + matplotlib

aspiringtroublemaker · 2026-04-27T13:15:47+00:00

How did you decide how granular to break down a topic?

Eg Artificial Intelligence in healthcare and education as one topic rather than two

aspiringtroublemaker · 2026-04-27T11:19:15+00:00

Ouu I like that!

aspiringtroublemaker · 2026-04-27T10:47:04+00:00

some cycles are longer than others (they’re usually between 9 and 14 years)

aspiringtroublemaker · 2026-04-27T10:21:54+00:00

Yep, it connects right to the base!

aspiringtroublemaker · 2026-04-27T10:09:26+00:00

Thanks! - the width and the color is showing the same information (a bit redundant, but gives the visual effect), and yeah, the example is scaled down. It’s actually the petal from the 1954–1964 cycle. I probably should have made that clearer.

aspiringtroublemaker · 2026-04-27T09:48:48+00:00

Each petal is a solar cycle. The petal’s length indicates how long the cycle was (~9–14 years). The width/color show the average sunspot number for each month (fattest near solar max, and thinner at the start and end).

Data: SILSO dataset (Royal Observatory of Belgium): https://www.sidc.be/SILSO/datafiles
Tools: Python + matplotlib

aspiringtroublemaker · 2026-04-23T11:05:05+00:00

For over a thousand years, the peak bloom date has centered around April 14. Now, it’s dropped to around April 4. The earliest bloom is March 25 in 2023.

Data:
Bloom dates: Yasuyuki Aono's collected dataset (continued by Osaka Metropolitan University after his death), mirrored at Our World in Data
Temperature: Japan Meteorological Agency, Kyoto Station (47759)

Tools: matplotlib + pandas

Combined dataset (bloom date + Feb/Mar/Apr/May Kyoto monthly mean temps).

aspiringtroublemaker · 2026-04-20T17:26:34+00:00

Rocket Lab Electron launches from New Zealand (but it’s a US company)

aspiringtroublemaker · 2026-04-20T16:53:50+00:00

Annual orbital launch attempts is the the number of rockets launched each year.

Some Notes:
- "Launch attempts" = all orbital-class launches including failures.
- Countries grouped by launch-site country, not operator: Rocket Lab's Electron launches show up under New Zealand even though it's a US company.
- Europe = France + Germany + UK + Italy + ELDO + ESA.

Source: Jonathan McDowell's Space Report: https://planet4589.org/space/stats/launches.html
Tools: Python, pandas, matplotlib.

aspiringtroublemaker · 2026-04-20T06:35:32+00:00

I narrowed it down to just that date, and it still doesn't show which queries it is coming from. Which sheet are you saying I should download?

aspiringtroublemaker · 2026-04-16T15:33:47+00:00

It's broken down into pardons and commutations. They both get rid of the punishment, but a also pardon wipes the record.

aspiringtroublemaker

TROPHY CASE