A Little Bit of Birthday Based Fun

Someone at the Office of National Statistics has been having a bit of a play with birthday data. This time of the year (the second half of September) is the most popular time to be born (with September 26th being the "peak" day on the data for the last twenty years.

The peak in births in late September show that more babies are conceived in the weeks leading up to and days after Christmas than at any other time of the year. Honestly. You would have thought mince pies was enough. Unsurprisngly though, Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Years Day have the lowest number of births on average than all the other days of the year: given they are all bank holidays, induced births and elective caesareans will often to be scheduled on alternative dates.

The data also revelas that, over the last two decades, on average a baby has been born every 48 seconds. In that period however, there were 8 days where exactyl 1,440 babies were born

• 25 December 2014
• 6 February 2005
• 16 May 2004
• 6 July 2002
• 9 February 2002
• 13 April 1998
• 25 October 1997
• 11 February 1996

On those days therefore, there was literally one born every minute.

<iframe src="http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/HTMLDocs/dvc307/chart1/index.html" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="100%" height="700px"></iframe>

Data and embedded chart courtesy of the Office of National Statistics Slow Day Department. You can find out more of their birthday based facts at http://visual.ons.gov.uk/how-popular-is-your-birthday/