A new research project aims to find out what makes us happy or sad based on our tweets. Analysing data in real-time, the site trawls through tweets to analyse language and expression to gauge our happiness at any given time. Hedonometer launched this week and brings with it five years of data for anyone to access:
Since 2009, Christmas Day has by far been the happiest day of the year.
With Thanksgiving performing well.
Closely followed by Christmas Eve.
While New Year’s also ranks highly.
As does Independence Day in the U.S.
And Easter Sunday.
So what do all of these have in common? Family, celebrations, good food, probably some alcohol, but more importantly, they’re all public holidays. It seems nothing gets us going like an extra day off. Indeed, this trend can be clearly seen in the overall data, where a steady stream of red and pink dots (Saturdays and Sundays) dominates in the happiness stakes over the mid-week slump of turquoise and green dots (representing Tuesdays to Thursdays).
What we’re starting to see from big data projects like this, including Wolfram Alpha’s Facebook project, is that there is a lot less serendipity in the human race than we like to think. The happiness index plots an absolute path of happiness and shows our needs are pretty simple after all!
