[mfdaniels]

Yea, there's lots of other charts, sources, notes that I could have included in the piece. The challenge is that this is not an academic study – it's Internet catnip. All the things that make studies too dense and boring to read (i.e., assumptions, abstractions and simplifications) are purposefully excluded.

I know that this undermines the credibility of the article, but I'm optimized for readability and storytelling, not to build a full-proof argument for timelessness. There's a million rabbit-holes that I could have gone down to make a much more solid case, but I decided to present the data and let the reader draw conclusions (kinda like I did with the hip hop/vocab piece: http://poly-graph.com/vocabulary.html).

I also realize that one could argue that this is a terrible way to approach a writing/data-analysis project. Assumptions and simplifications are important to highlight. But I weighed the options and decided to focus on accessibility.

Happy to discuss the pros/cons of this further :)