Figure 1

Autism prevalence vs. birth year for California IDEA data, derived using two independent methods: 1) Constant-age tracking of 9 year-olds over 20 years of annual reports from 1991–2010 (red) and 2) Age-resolved snapshot from the most recent report in 2010 (blue). The slope of each curve over the same birth year interval, 1993–2001, is estimated with a least squares linear fit. The snapshot fit (grey) spans ages 9–17 in the 2010 report. The constant-age tracking fit spans report years 2002–2010. The snapshot:tracking slope ratio over the 1993–2001 birth year interval is 0.80.