Names, and more names

First off …

Today marks a day of rotating strike action by ETFO members in the following districts:

• Kawartha Pine Ridge
• Hastings-Prince Edward
• Upper Grand
• Moosonee
• Moose Factory

Details here.

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I had a great deal of fun with this:

Guessing Names Based on What They Start With

So, it looks like the program is 32% confident that my parents named me Douglas. But, it’s a little over 40% sure that it might have been Donald. Well, I was kind of impressed because my parents did name my younger brother Donald.

The input is pretty simple; choose your gender, your birth decade, and then a few letters from your first name and see the results. As the author notes, the data is from US sources which is close enough for me for the entertainment value. And maybe statistics in the classroom.

As I was playing, the programmer in me thought “this can’t be that difficult to write – all you need is the data”. So, I did some internet searching.

This was interesting but wasn’t quite easy enough to work with.

Then, I found this resource. Admittedly, this is from an American source but it’s perfect to work with names by decade. I was able to easily create some data files and write the code to interact with it. So, there’s my tip to Computer Science teachers for today. I love coming up with new ideas to do some coding with.

Oh, and just to settle something for people that do know me. I wasn’t born in the 1970s but if the Internet wants some fake news, go for it.