(I will warn you now, there are no pictures today. But there are nifty little graphics, so I figured that might make up for it. If not, sorry.)
I found this website yesterday. It apparently tells you how many people in the US have a certain name. So I put in my name and got:
I thought that was pretty cool. So then I put in Alfred's name.
Um, I happen to know 2 people with this name (Alfred and his dad.) I was like, what the hell? I put in Alfred instead of Max for the first name, and got 3 people. Then I put in my dad's name:
Well, we know this is not true. So I got annoyed and stopped. Than I went back today and looked for more people. There's apparently no one with Cathy, Ella or Mason's names. But it does say (which I did not notice yesterday) "While both names you entered were found in our database, neither was common enough to make it likely that someone in the U.S. has that name."
So apparently it's not actually searching a database and figuring out how many people in the US actually have a certain name, which is what they make it sound like. They're really just taking the number of people with the first name and the number of people with the last name, and figuring out statistically how many people are likely to have that combination. What a rip off. But you can still use it to see how many people have the same first or last name as you. Of course, I don't know how accurate it really is, because it says no one has the first name Ellery, and that more people are named Guy and Alfred than Max. Oh, and I just found out that no one has Steph's last name. (Yes, I'm purposely not mentioning any last names here. Yes, I'm probably irrationally paranoid.)
Ok, I just decided to read the "Accuracy" section, and it says: Fourth, not every name is on the list. A certain number of instances of a name were required to even make the list. About 10% of all responses were not included on the list because they appeared too few times. So, uncommon names are not represented on the list. So I guess that explains that. 10% seems like kind of a lot to just not include, but what do I know.
So, what's the take home message here? It's kind of fun to play with, especially when it says you don't exist, or you're one of a kind. Why did I bother writing all this? Cause I have nothing else new to talk about (I mean, really, do we need to hear about my burn again?) Plus, lots of blogs I read have really long posts, and I wanted one too. And I wanted to see if anyone would bother reading all of this. And I don't feel like going back and editing. Take that! :)
I found this website yesterday. It apparently tells you how many people in the US have a certain name. So I put in my name and got:
| HowManyOfMe.com | ||
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I thought that was pretty cool. So then I put in Alfred's name.
Um, I happen to know 2 people with this name (Alfred and his dad.) I was like, what the hell? I put in Alfred instead of Max for the first name, and got 3 people. Then I put in my dad's name:
Well, we know this is not true. So I got annoyed and stopped. Than I went back today and looked for more people. There's apparently no one with Cathy, Ella or Mason's names. But it does say (which I did not notice yesterday) "While both names you entered were found in our database, neither was common enough to make it likely that someone in the U.S. has that name."
So apparently it's not actually searching a database and figuring out how many people in the US actually have a certain name, which is what they make it sound like. They're really just taking the number of people with the first name and the number of people with the last name, and figuring out statistically how many people are likely to have that combination. What a rip off. But you can still use it to see how many people have the same first or last name as you. Of course, I don't know how accurate it really is, because it says no one has the first name Ellery, and that more people are named Guy and Alfred than Max. Oh, and I just found out that no one has Steph's last name. (Yes, I'm purposely not mentioning any last names here. Yes, I'm probably irrationally paranoid.)
Ok, I just decided to read the "Accuracy" section, and it says: Fourth, not every name is on the list. A certain number of instances of a name were required to even make the list. About 10% of all responses were not included on the list because they appeared too few times. So, uncommon names are not represented on the list. So I guess that explains that. 10% seems like kind of a lot to just not include, but what do I know.
So, what's the take home message here? It's kind of fun to play with, especially when it says you don't exist, or you're one of a kind. Why did I bother writing all this? Cause I have nothing else new to talk about (I mean, really, do we need to hear about my burn again?) Plus, lots of blogs I read have really long posts, and I wanted one too. And I wanted to see if anyone would bother reading all of this. And I don't feel like going back and editing. Take that! :)
1 comment:
Gee, I should have told you about Dad's paper cut, you could have written about that. He acted like he almost severed a finger.
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