An Alarming Spike

 

What happened, indeed? And yes, I did just upload the first result of 'alarming spike' I saw. Again, yes, I say 'upload' because freaking blogger won't let me just copy-paste images anymore.

There has been a spike in my blog's stats. Don't get me wrong, at first, I was pretty glad that people were visiting and reading my blog, and it all felt like natural growth, linear becoming exponential. But that modest, acceptable spike in views started increasing suspiciously, and now, I'm suspicious. Can we please go back to a normal increase in views instead of whatever is happening to my stats?

I'm talking to you, random bots. Stop messing with my blog. 

The thing is, these views occur at random yet evenly distributed times, making it all seem like this is normal. See below for a visual aid example. 

I don't know what a random spike test is, and I don't know what's happening here anymore, but bots seem to be the usual suspects around here. I'm a future stats major; believe me when I say I'll use five-number summaries, normalCDF and invNorm to investigate the outliers of life even when the last two aren't even tools to find outliers. 

There's another alarming spike happening in the world though too. Recently, the US Atlantic coast has seen a number of dead and stranded whales washed up on the shore. Like my blog stats, the true cause behind these bodies is unknown. These whales may be affected by natural causes, disease, or human impact. According to the NOAA, nine whale bodies have been washed up since the beginning of the year, which may not seem like much. However, the annual number of bodies in the past is around 50. Currently, we're on track to 108 bodies this year. 

Sea levels are also spiking in the Atlantic and other oceans. The NOAA estimates that the US may experience 100 years of sea level rising in the next 30 years. There's also been an increase in algae blooms, which is often attributed to fertilizer runoff containing phosphates and nitrates. Sargassum waves, a type of brown algae, are predicted to worsen this year, affecting both sea and coastal life here on land. Seaweed can be a good thing, but not when it suffocates everything around it. Check my next post for more on seaweed. 

Temperatures are spiking, wildfires are spiking, political tensions are spiking, world populations are spiking, and so much more is spiking too, like stress. I mean, I can practically feel my cortisol going off the charts just listing these facts. 

Let's take a step back—with a wider perspective. World population is one of the roots to many of the world's environmental problems, and it is increasing. However, our population growth rate is actually starting to even off; the average birth rate is also decreasing. In a century or so, we may even see a decline in population as birth rates fall even more. This is demonstrated in the demographic transition model and statistics that researchers have crunched over the years. I can practically feel my endorphins going off now. 

Although the news about our population alleviates stress now, this doesn't mean our problems are solved or will naturally be solved by doing nothing. Birth rates are declining due to the efforts of those promoting education and career opportunities for women and laws that protect women's rights. Causes have effects but remember that effects have causes too. 

Many things may be spiking, but they're not as black and white as they seem. Fine, I admit it's nice to see so many views on my stats. (Potential) bots may not be so bad after all. (Ok, that's a lie, I still can't stand bots.) Anyways, we should note that the proportion of educated citizens is spiking, job openings are spiking, and awareness for the environment is spiking alongside action. 

Conclusion? Silver linings exist in spikes. I mean, who knew a spike in views would've led to this enlightening post?

EDIT AT 6:54 - how funny is it that this post got 27 views in 12 minutes

EDIT AT 7:00 - ok, i can't stop thinking about how this is my post with the most views, and i don't know how to feel about that