Bing vs. Google — One Anecdote

My daughter's math class needed to find examples of periodic behavior and estimate a sine curve to fit the data, both manually and by using a TI-83 calculator. Obvious examples of periodic behavior are average city monthly temperatures and low/high tides. My daughter wanted something a bit more unusual; her teacher suggested looking at data for live births by month in the U.S. prior to the introduction of contraceptives.

So off to Google we went. She typed in "live births by month in the U.S., 1954" and got this search result page. We clicked on several of the links, ending up at this page about the US census. Data is yearly, we needed monthly. But there is a URL at the bottom of the page that we followed to the Center for Disease Control. And with a few more clicks, we found what we were looking for, Yearly Vital Statistics Reports.

We downloaded various PDFs, found the monthly numbers, and my daughter used Excel to plot the graphs, fiddled with the constants to come up with a good approximation, and used her calculator to get the best sine curve fit possible. About an hour and a half in work.

While she was finishing up, an advertisement for Bing was running on the TV. So I gave it a try, and typed in exactly the same thing:"live births by month in the U.S., 1954." I didn't know what to expect, but here's the page, and look at the fourth result. Bing-o! Not only the data, but various graphs and explanations for the seasonal variation in live births. All in two clicks.

This is only one anecdote. I don't know yet if Bing is a decision engine, but in this case it was a powerful discovery engine that beat Google hands-down.

Chris Johnson

Amusingly, this post is now the #1 result in Google… but not in Bing.

Wolfram Alpha, the computation engine designed to deliver real results to queries like this, disappoints.

http://www82.wolframalpha.com/.....hs+us+1954
Chris Johnson

Amusingly, this post is now the #1 result in Google… but not in Bing.

Wolfram Alpha, the computation engine designed to deliver real results to queries like this, disappoints.

http://www82.wolframalpha.com/.....hs+us+1954
Gary Bivings

Chris,
Hi. What I wanted to do was to take the data from the .pdf and put it into Wolfram Alpha, and not have to use a calculator. But I’ve not figured how to input the data to get a sine curve as a result. (We used WA to do a lot of trig homework; but there’s lots of WA we’ve not figured out.)
Gary Bivings

Chris,
Hi. What I wanted to do was to take the data from the .pdf and put it into Wolfram Alpha, and not have to use a calculator. But I’ve not figured how to input the data to get a sine curve as a result. (We used WA to do a lot of trig homework; but there’s lots of WA we’ve not figured out.)
http://blogcampaigning.com Parker

An interesting anecdote, and makes me think I should give Bing more of a shot.
At the very least, try and run searches in both as often as possible and track which ones helped me out more.
http://blogcampaigning.com Parker

An interesting anecdote, and makes me think I should give Bing more of a shot.
At the very least, try and run searches in both as often as possible and track which ones helped me out more.
http://sazbean.com/2009/06/19/internet-marketing-strategy-technology-links-june-19-2009/ Internet Marketing, Strategy & Technology Links – June 19, 2009 « Sazbean

[...] Bing vs. Google — One Anecdote (The Bivings Report) [...]
http://www.mapinhand.com/ map

1st impressions of new ‘decision engine’ Bing – impressed with image/video search and infiinite scrolling but news search sucks…
http://www.mapinhand.com/ map

1st impressions of new ‘decision engine’ Bing – impressed with image/video search and infiinite scrolling but news search sucks…
http://blog.gadodia.net Vaibhav

I use Bing by default as my search engine, and while it works a lot of times, a number of times I have to go back to Google – Google understands the context of queries better IMO – Here are some examples that I ran: http://blog.gadodia.net/bing-v.....xperience/
http://blog.gadodia.net Vaibhav

I use Bing by default as my search engine, and while it works a lot of times, a number of times I have to go back to Google – Google understands the context of queries better IMO – Here are some examples that I ran: http://blog.gadodia.net/bing-v.....xperience/

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As a result of the change, The Bivings Report will no longer be updated, although we intend to keep it up for archival purposes. You can read the Brick Factory's new blog here.

Bing vs. Google — One Anecdote

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