These days, aided by social media trends, we see a flood of themed days and anniversaries of all kinds. From the most important and well-known, like May Day or International Women’s Day, to days dedicated to pizza, dogs, or Nutella. Anticipating this trend, in 2010, English computer scientist William Tunstall-Pedoe developed a simple algorithm called True Knowledge (later replaced by the more advanced Evi and now part of Amazon) to identify, after analyzing more than 300 million pieces of news, the most boring day in contemporary history. The result was April 11, 1954.
To arrive at this answer, True Knowledge used algorithms to determine how related the various news items were, that is, how each piece of news was connected to the others. In the end, even though nothing extraordinary happened on April 11, 1954, this day became famous precisely for this reason. Statistically interesting is the fact that no famous personality was born on that day, and a coup organized in a small French colony in India, Yanoon, was postponed. However, as Tunstall-Pedoe emphasizes, the algorithm was not developed only to identify the least significant day in global history. Though not as sophisticated as the algorithms used today, it could answer many other questions.
Statistically interesting is the fact that no famous personality was born on that day, and a coup organized in a small French colony in India, Yanoon, was postponed.
Of course, Tunstall-Pedoe formulated his mathematical definition of an “insignificant day,” based on the breadth, measured in the number of relationships, of a sort of butterfly effect of events. Reality and history, however, are not made up only of great events, and, as we know, the dynamics of power and politics in what we now call the infosphere play a fundamental role in their connection. One of the reasons the algorithm identified this day is precisely that it was—not coincidentally—a Sunday, and at the time, the media system was on pause. Today, we know that elections were held in Belgium on that day, and several international sporting events also took place.
In any case, this story reminds us that algorithms are nothing more than tools developed by us humans, and like us, they are subject to bias and are strongly influenced by language. What is certain is that the story of the most boring day in the world was an excellent publicity stunt about the power and capabilities of algorithms, even if they were relatively rudimentary at the time compared to today.