Live data from Hacker News

A map of the US where city names are replaced by most Wikipedia’ed resident

pudding.cool

51–60 of 225 posts

Re: A map of the US where city names are replaced by most Wikipedia’ed resident

#51
post #5

Curious. Why are they almost all men? And, what's with all the wrestlers!?!

See Gwen Stefani from both Anaheim and Fullerton, California. She grew up in fullerton but famously got neighbors agitated from her own rental in Anaheim. Perfecting "I'm just a girl" out of her garage took a long time.

Re: A map of the US where city names are replaced by most Wikipedia’ed resident

#52
post #46

It's too bad there are so many duplicates. I think it would be more interesting if it was based on birthplace, since big cities that attract lots of businesspeople/celebrities just get tagged with someone really famous who doesn't have any particular connection with the city (e.g. Elon Musk on Los Angeles, Steve Jobs on basically everywhere in the Bay Area). The Wikidata "place of birth" field would probably be a rea…

Birthplace would be interesting, but there’s plenty of famous/important people who are connected to a location other than their birthplace. Think sports stars who were on a team far away from their home.

Re: A map of the US where city names are replaced by most Wikipedia’ed resident

#53
This is interesting in large part as a demonstration of how bizarre/indefinite the idea of being "from" a place is. For instance, Cambridge, MA isn't headlined by a famous MIT/Harvard academic, or local political figure, or even Neil Gaiman- but instead by Bhumibol Adulyadej, the previous king of Thailand, who was born there while his father was studying at Harvard, and left at the age of 2. Meanwhile, Boston gets John Cena, who was born in a far-out suburb.

Re: A map of the US where city names are replaced by most Wikipedia’ed resident

#54

Using Wikipedia leads to some weird results. I checked my hometown in NC and would have expected Michael Jordan to be listed as the most famous associated person, but he doesn’t appear on the main Wikipedia entry so we instead got James Taylor.

I saw the same thing, so I checked the Micheal Jordan Wikipedia page and it actually does not contain the text "Chapel Hill".

Re: A map of the US where city names are replaced by most Wikipedia’ed resident

#55
post #15

Hm, I would also be interested in how cities look if your measure is "highest lookup rate relative to national average". That is, sure, Dwayne Johnson is looked up a lot in some city, but who is looked up most compared to everywhere else ?

It's not "people from here look up this person a lot", it's "who is the most-looked-up person that's linked to here ", where is whatever dataset they're using to connect people to places (it's not birthplace; it might be lived-here-at-some-point? or "has the place mentioned in their Wikipedia page", or some composite). The location of the searcher is irrelevant.

Re: A map of the US where city names are replaced by most Wikipedia’ed resident

#56
post #46

It's too bad there are so many duplicates. I think it would be more interesting if it was based on birthplace, since big cities that attract lots of businesspeople/celebrities just get tagged with someone really famous who doesn't have any particular connection with the city (e.g. Elon Musk on Los Angeles, Steve Jobs on basically everywhere in the Bay Area). The Wikidata "place of birth" field would probably be a rea…

The person for my hometown on that website seems to only have been born there but moved away before elementary school, so I'm not sure how that's really all that interesting.

Re: A map of the US where city names are replaced by most Wikipedia’ed resident

#57
post #46

It's too bad there are so many duplicates. I think it would be more interesting if it was based on birthplace, since big cities that attract lots of businesspeople/celebrities just get tagged with someone really famous who doesn't have any particular connection with the city (e.g. Elon Musk on Los Angeles, Steve Jobs on basically everywhere in the Bay Area). The Wikidata "place of birth" field would probably be a rea…

[deleted]

Re: A map of the US where city names are replaced by most Wikipedia’ed resident

#58
post #39

Expected Lansing would be Magic Johnson but instead its Larry Page. Magic comes back often and is active in local charities, even leading efforts to raise money for college scholarships. On the other hand Larry Page has to my knowledge never returned or given a dime to local charities. So perhaps that makes people ever more curious about him.

As a resident of East Lansing I’ve often wondered what was the deal with Larry Page never having anything to do with the town. I figured it’s a tradition if you “make it big” to throw money around in your hometown even if it’s purely for egocentric reasons. Is there bad blood somehow?

Re: A map of the US where city names are replaced by most Wikipedia’ed resident

#59
Ah fuck, what a good idea and fun project this must have been.

How do people come up with awesome ideas like this? Whenever I have time for a personal project it'll be like... "guess I'll uh.... make this LED on a raspberry pi blink... wheee"

Re: A map of the US where city names are replaced by most Wikipedia’ed resident

#60

This is interesting in large part as a demonstration of how bizarre/indefinite the idea of being "from" a place is. For instance, Cambridge, MA isn't headlined by a famous MIT/Harvard academic, or local political figure, or even Neil Gaiman- but instead by Bhumibol Adulyadej, the previous king of Thailand, who was born there while his father was studying at Harvard, and left at the age of 2. Meanwhile, Boston gets Jo…

That is strange; most places I checked were dominated by figures from popular culture. Huntsville, AL, for example...
Post reply on HN