I updated the last post to include a link to the source code, and updated the plots with attribution to the data source, timeanddate.com

Based on Jim’s comment on the last post I thought it would be easy to re-run the analysis for Anchorage.  However, the Anchorage data was more difficult to handle, due to a period of continuous twilight at various times in the year.

So, as a workaround I just downloaded the tables for sunrise and sunset.   Personally,  I was more curious about Miami than Anchorage… but they are both easy to run with the new code.

Here’s what we gain / give up in terms of daylight for these locations.

Also, I thought that the speed at which the days change was much more interesting when comparing cities:

The way that the website deals with a

My favorite day of the year is December 21, because that’s the day where the days finally start getting longer.

I’ve always wondered how quickly we gain and lose time as the seasons change, and so I thought I would try “scraping” the data off the web.  Here is that result:

Although it’s interesting to note to see where the days are getting shorter and longer, something else grabbed my attention along the way to this graph.  I was interested by the effect of daylight savings on our day.

In my younger days I loved that magical weekend when we “gained an hour”, because it felt easier to wake up for at least one Monday a year.  These days I feel much more anticipation for the spring ahead weekend, when we regain our fair share of sunshine.

Here’s what our days look like currently (with daylight savings):

Here is what our days would look like without daylight savings:

Source code: http://geneorama.com/code/SunriseSunsetExample/

I finally posted my guide to “getting started with R.

Now I need to spend some time to figure out “permalinks” in WordPress to make the link simpler and less likely to changet.