Disproportionately Common Names by Profession • Hacker News Board

Re: Disproportionately Common Names by Profession

#21

Post by adevine » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 4:12 PM UTC

teamhappy wrote: post #3

> People with these names are more likely than others to have these professions. Shouldn't it say: "People with these names happen to be in those professions more often than others"? Anyway, there are a couple of fun ones in there, but I'll let you figure those out yourself. Unfortunately neither my name nor my profession are covered — I'm not quite sure what to make of that. :/ --- They use the same language in thei…

It doesn't appear incorrect to me. The blurb on the graph says "For example, a higher percentage of Elwoods are farmers than of most any other name."

As I read it, it means that, say, 1% of Elwoods become farmers, while only .1% of Steves are farmers. That is, if your name is Elwood, you are much more likely to be a farmer than if your name is anything else.

Re: Disproportionately Common Names by Profession

#22

Post by teamhappy » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 4:13 PM UTC

kornakiewicz wrote: post #18

teamhappy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In our sample of two and a half million people, a whopping 1.9% of Arnolds are accountants. Contrast that with just 0.55% of Shanes. Arnolds therefore appear to have a much higher tendency to be accountants than Shanes." http://www.verdantlabs.com/blog/2014/12/30/names-by-professi... You see where this is going. If you correlate the data with the popularity of names in general, you'll find that Arnold is a much more…

Well, you're not right. Almost 2% of Arnolds is more than 0.5% of Shanes, no matter how much there're Arnolds and Shanes. If you take 100 Arnolds and 100 Shanes there will be (statistically) 2 Arnolds and "half of Shane".

> Well, you're not right.

I think I am, but I might be wrong on that one too.

Given a pool of 10 people to hire from where 6 people are named Arnold and 4 are named shawn Shawn, wouldn't you expect that same relation to show in a specific profession? You can, of course, go ahead and compare those relations. So, if there only were 5 race car drivers in the world and 4 of them were named Arnold that would be noteworthy (as opposed to 60% of them, which is what you'd expect). Please let me know if I got something wrong.

---

Somebody just posted an article stating the numbers where actually correlated with the frequency they are used. I'm not sure how they did it though given that those numbers change over time.

Re: Disproportionately Common Names by Profession

#23

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 4:14 PM UTC

golemotron wrote: post #13

JohnE008 wrote: post #5

After we tackled gender inequalities, we can move on to name inequalities. How about introducing name-quotas, that ought to fix the problem.

You're missing the fact that we can see gender inequalities in this data. All of the disproportionate names for fitness instructors are female. Either there's much wider variance of male names for fitness instructors or there's terrible gender disparity in that profession.

[deleted]

Re: Disproportionately Common Names by Profession

#24

Post by MichaelTieso » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 4:14 PM UTC

tarpherder wrote: post #12

Its interesting to see the difference in type of names between Football Coach (Dan, Bill, Mike, Jim, Rich, Steve) and Electrical Engineer (Bernard, Eugene, Edwin, Charles, Alfred, Harvey). Short (one vowel each), common, English versus longer (two vowels each) French/"Posh" English names. Correlation between the names and background/educative level seems likely? Songwriter is interesting too: 4 out of 5 end with a va…

I wonder however if Eugene were a Football Coach if he Edwin would then be called Ed for short. Perhaps Dan into Daniel and Mike into Michael for Electrical Engineer.

Re: Disproportionately Common Names by Profession

#25

Post by mrcarrot » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 4:15 PM UTC

tarpherder wrote: post #12

Its interesting to see the difference in type of names between Football Coach (Dan, Bill, Mike, Jim, Rich, Steve) and Electrical Engineer (Bernard, Eugene, Edwin, Charles, Alfred, Harvey). Short (one vowel each), common, English versus longer (two vowels each) French/"Posh" English names. Correlation between the names and background/educative level seems likely? Songwriter is interesting too: 4 out of 5 end with a va…

The 'football coach' names you list there are all contractions of a name that would be at least 2 syllables long, though.

edit: (or yeah, what MichaelTieso said :) )

Re: Disproportionately Common Names by Profession

#26

Post by stygiansonic » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 4:16 PM UTC

Camillo wrote: post #9

This is worthless unless they correct for age. Which they most likely don't, since age is not even mentioned in the post.

Indeed, the time period in which someone was born seems to have a significant effect on the likelihood of certain names. Here's one study that documents that effect in the US:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-to-tell-someones-age...

Re: Disproportionately Common Names by Profession

#27

Post by kornakiewicz » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 4:16 PM UTC

kornakiewicz wrote: post #20

Some time ago, I saw a paper when some scientists find that people often tends to have place of live and job which is somehow connected with their names eg. there's more Denises who works as dentists or Louises in Louisiane. I also noticed that in my country (Poland) there's quite more people working in IT with names or surnames which begins on K (Polish word for computer is "komputer"), I'm the case.

http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/stuff_for_blog/susie.pd... - it's the paper.

http://andrewgelman.com/2005/08/05/dennis_the_denv/ - short summary.

Re: Disproportionately Common Names by Profession

#28

Post by spion » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 4:17 PM UTC

Nice chart. It would be interesting if hovering over a name also highlights the same name in other professions.

Re: Disproportionately Common Names by Profession

#29

Post by logn » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 4:18 PM UTC

Not sure I trust the results. For guitarists they list: Mick, Richie, Trey, Sonny, Buddy, Eddie. That correlates strongly with famous musician names (Mick Jagger, Lionel Richie, Trey Anastasio, Sonny Rollins, Buddy Guy, Eddie Van Halen). Maybe kids are named after these legends and are pushed toward music, but maybe their software just counted a lot of duplicate mentions?

Re: Disproportionately Common Names by Profession

#30

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 4:20 PM UTC

teamhappy wrote: post #8

proveanegative wrote: post #2

Apparently they don't state what "disproportionately" is supposed to mean. If that is indeed the case I doubt much valid insight can be derived from this chart.

"In our sample of two and a half million people, a whopping 1.9% of Arnolds are accountants. Contrast that with just 0.55% of Shanes. Arnolds therefore appear to have a much higher tendency to be accountants than Shanes." http://www.verdantlabs.com/blog/2014/12/30/names-by-professi... You see where this is going. If you correlate the data with the popularity of names in general, you'll find that Arnold is a much more…

[deleted]