The great lakes were not included, sorry about that.

Data from trends.google.com. I checked which the most googled game (out of a list of over 100) was each month during 2022, and then counted which game was the top game for most months.

As has been the case for most of the time since 2011, Minecraft has been the top game, but now Roblox is creeping in. Elden Ring also made an appearance in 2022.

Youtube video with results each month from 2006

Made in R with the cartography package.

I have, but as you know he did not include data on the 2022 World Cup

Yes! I have read it.

Well we start the new school year in august, but the cut-off is still January! Everybody that is born a specific calendar year starts school the same time in August. If you are born December 31 the year before you start in August a year earlier.

It depends on the country. In Sweden where I live January is the cutoff for both schools and most sports.

Can be! Or randomness.

Yes, and between countries. But I thought I would just do something simple here (most countries probably use January 1 as the cutoff), and I think the fact that it shows up despite the coarse analysis shows the importance of the phenomenon.

The relative age effect is documented in a wide range of sports and also in academics. A child born in January will be 11 months older than a child born in December the same calendar year, which is a big relative difference at young ages. If coaches don't think of this, they will misperceive the older kid as being more mature and talented, and will then encourage the older kid more.

I took data on all players in the FIFA World Cup and checked their birth month. Just as expected, the most common months to be born are January, February and March.

Some countries may have other cutoff dates for starting school or sports teams than January 1, but despite this, the effect shines through.

Made in R using the ggplot2 package. Data from fbref.com.