Why do so many soccer players celebrate their birthday in January? The importance of due date | Spain

⚽️ good morning! Today I write about football, although it is not really about football.

Many people want to be soccer players as children, and as they get older they discover that it is very difficult. But it’s not difficult for everyone: Those born in January have twice as many options as those in December.

It is a known phenomenon. At Real Madrid, there are twice the number of players born between January and March than there are between October and December. Something similar is happening at Real Sociedad or Atlético, not a coincidence, but examples of a pattern that repeats every year. You can see it in the graph showing the percentage of Spanish Elite players by month they were born:

The style is almost universal. We can see this with French, German or Italian players thanks to the data that the people have Driblab, Which contains information on 150,000 players.

The pattern was only broken when I looked at the UK (you can here View the interactive version of the chart). I thought, “How strange” because, logically, this phenomenon should happen everywhere. But I immediately found the explanation: it turns out that in the UK, the age limit for children is in September, not January. The effect is the same, but the bad thing (being a soccer player) is that you are born in the summer.

I told you earlier that births are not an explanation of the phenomenon, because almost the same babies are born every month of the year. You can see it in this animation:

I also prepared this graph with the birthdate of the Spanish, French, German and Italian players from dozens of major clubs. sound Better at interacting.

The above mentioned phenomenon, which is known as Christmas effect or age effectIt wouldn’t be a big problem if it only affected boys and girls who wanted to become elite athletes. But this doesn’t just happen in sports.

Being born in certain months also helps you in school. With the same logic, if you are one of the oldest people in the class when you are six years old, it is easier for you to be good at reading or adding; You will be better in school and this initial trait can be replenished if it helps you learn more from the start, or if your teacher, classmates, or your family pushes you to continue being a good student. In the UK, those born in August – when they are young – have a more difficult time going to Oxford. Other studies have found that they go to university less, that they are less likely to be MPs (in Finland at least), and that it is very rare for them to end up leading a large company.

Being born in January seems to give you (a little) an advantage. But the birthday phenomenon does not interest me for that. I like it because it’s a reminder of how chance affects our lives.

Your life also depends on coincidences. If you were born in a month or another that has any significance, there will be a thousand similar sweepstakes in your life, little things, like your school or the teacher you had in third grade. There are a lot of strange examples: We know that Being the youngest of several siblings helps you be a good athlete, That your NBA signature could collapse because scouts give you a title, or you lose opposition by submitting the most recent one.

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🇪🇺 2. Who will win Eurovision?

We have revised the bets, because in recent years they have been very good at hitting the winner. The candidates for this year are Italy, France and Malta, followed by Switzerland and Ukraine. A Spanish victory is pushed from 100 to 1, so it hardly won’t happen.

We’ve also drawn a map of communities or gangs, with countries that are awarded more points than usual.

maps! I did not send you what we got with the election results in Madrid, I was a little late, but there were many interesting things that I summed up. This Twitter thread.

When will we reach herd immunity? Knowing if it will happen, and when it will happen, is perhaps the most important question now with covid-19. This article by Oriole Goel provided a good summary of what we know.

🎲 4. Results random

We have been blinded by beauty. A study shows that there is no relationship between physical attractiveness and better academic performance. Handsome men don’t get better (or worse) scores. However, there is a strong correlation between being attractive and people looking at you as smart: If you are handsome, you appear smarter. | Twitter

Japanese is complicated. it’s a Article It explains well the advantages and disadvantages of his writing system. It’s a pull to learn hundreds or thousands of kanji characters, each with subtle meanings, but of course it lets you say more with less: “Japanese and Korean characters can convey twice the information that English characters do.”

Bacteria optically represent heat. They discovered it in the sea 2.3 kilometers from the surface, where it lives peacefully taking advantage of the near infrared light emitted from hydrothermal vents and a temperature of 400 degrees Celsius. Basically, it appears that these microorganisms perform photosynthesis without the need for sunlight, using heat from Earth’s core. This, in addition to being rare, is a reminder that we find life almost anywhere on Earth as we search: “Underground, in radioactive trash, in tar, in the stratosphere, we feed on something that we never consider food.” If this were possible, it would become even more difficult to believe that we would not find life in the harsh conditions of elsewhere in the universe. | Orbital index

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