Open data: baby names
The Herald has a headline “Emma and Noah continue to be tops for baby names”, with this link from the web front page
In fact, Noah was number 11 as a baby boy’s name, and Emma didn’t make the top hundred names for baby girls in New Zealand. The top names in NZ, as in this Stuff story from the first week of January, were Oliver and Olivia. That story also had tables and graphs from the Dept of Internal Affairs data.
The new Herald story is about the USA, where they take longer to accumulate and release the baby-name data, but where they have the indefatigable Laura Wattenberg to make sure it gets publicised.
In fact, it’s kind of surprising how much difference there is between the US and NZ lists. Enough to make it worth pointing out in the story. UK data won’t be out for another few months. Based on last year, it’s a bit more similar to NZ. Maybe we’ll get another story then.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »