Correlations between Google search data and Mortality Rates

Inspired by correlations recently discovered between Google search data and financial markets1, we show correlations between Google search data mortality rates. Words with negative connotations may provide for increased mortality rates, while words with positive connotations may provide for decreased mortality rates, and so statistical methods were employed to determine to investigate further. Statistically significant correlations between Google search data and financial markets exist 1. The methods used can be used to attempt to find correlations between any time series data and Google3 searches. Since insurance premiums are based on mortality rates, if one can predict mortality rates with a point or interval estimator, an insurance company can re-evaluate a policy every year and update the premium based on what search data may suggest in addition to standard pricing methods. As Google search data and mortality rates are time series data, we can use cross correlations (defined below), to determine if correlations exist and we can show where they exist. Using R, we can use the ccf() (cross-correlation function) command to easily graph and find significan