Template:Did you know nominations/Birthday effect


 * The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as |this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by &mdash; Coffee //  have a cup  //  beans  // 10:38, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Birthday effect

 * ... that you are more likely to die on or near your birthday than at other times?
 * ALT1 ... that many studies find you are more likely to die on or near your birthday than at other times?
 * Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Imperator (horse)
 * Comment: Was previously a redirect to the unrelated birthday problem.

Created by Smurrayinchester (talk). Self-nominated at 12:24, 7 April 2016 (UTC).


 * Symbol question.svg This needs some work. It is plenty long enough, and new enough, and I have checked the references. The chief issue is whether this effect is real or whether it results from statistical problems. I see some issues with this in the article as well, but in any case the hook is stated too strongly. I'm also having issues with the name, because "birthday effect" is used both for the birthday problem in statistics and for yet another set of issues relating to cut-off dates for admission to schooling. Mangoe (talk) 11:22, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the copyedit - looks a lot better. The title is a bit difficult, but as far as I can see, "birthday effect" is the standard term used in the literature. If someone were to create an article about the school performance effect, this would presumably be moved to birthday effect (mortality) or similar. As for the statistical anomaly claim, I'll make clearer that this has been rejected by studies. Reference 5 strongly rejects the hypothesis that it's just a statistical anomaly, and the authors of reference 15 ("Heaping in Anniversary Reaction Studies", which identifies a possible cause of statistical anomalies) subsequently found a birthday effect when controlling for this ("Mortality Salience of Birthdays on Day of Death in the Major Leagues"). Since I can't find any meta-analysis on the subject, you're probably right that the blurb is too strong. I've added a slightly weaker one. Smurrayinchester 12:04, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Symbol confirmed.svg second review shows the article to be ong enough, new enough, and corrects my issues with the lead. Mangoe (talk) 00:37, 30 April 2016 (UTC)