celebrity birthday trivia poll

[rm]

[Poll #1619848]

Comments

[rm.livejournal.com]

I bet they map differently. No idea if anyone's studied it, though.

[marcmagus]

That would be my guess too. I think people's birthdays have a weird pattern (between seasonal stuff that's "natural", seasonal stuff from people trying to conceive to a target birthday, and interesting cultural effects like the Baby Boom and, IIRC, an observable uptick a gestation period after major blackouts and the like, and the weird New Year taxes effect), but I'd bet dates chosen for characters have a wholly different set of stuff affecting them, with choosing for astrological significance or to match the birthdays of famous people. I'd also guess character birthdays have a lot less background noise of actually being mostly random.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I also bet you'd see more odd-numbered days than even for characters. I think odd numbers look more "random" to writers.

[marcmagus]

Wow, yeah, I hadn't even thought about people trying to pick "random" dates. People are terrible at generating anything even remotely random.