data

Visualizing 10 unusual causes of death in the CDC mortality database

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Let me make two things clear right up front: The metrics I used to decide what causes of death are unusual are purely subjective, i.e. which of the thousands of causes I skimmed through caught my eye and made me go, “Huh.” It is in no way my intention to make fun of anyone’s death. … Read more Visualizing 10 unusual causes of death in the CDC mortality database

visualizing word and letter frequencies

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Visualizing word and letter frequencies in Gadsby, a novel without the letter ‘e’ In 1939, Ernest Vincent Wright published the novel Gadsby (gee, I wonder where he came up with that name…), 58,124 words (by my count), none of which contain the letter ‘e’. Here are a few of the features of the English language Wright was … Read more visualizing word and letter frequencies

How often does a given letter follow another in English?

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The following chart is an interactive heat map of the probability that, given the letter on the vertical axis in an English word, the next letter will be the letter on the horizontal axis. Conditional probabilities can give you a headache; that’s why the Monty Hall problem is so difficult. The best way to grasp it is … Read more How often does a given letter follow another in English?

Mythological names are on rise pokemon

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Mythological names are on the rise; Pokémon, not so much. As you can see, mythological boys’ names were pretty negligible until the mid-1990s, after which they’ve had quite an explosion, with boys named Phoenix, Odin and Ares leading the pack. Girls having mythological names was more common than boys in the past, but they’ve increased … Read more Mythological names are on rise pokemon