Most Common Name: state-pop.csv

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This directory contains the code and data behind the story Dear Mona, What’s The Most Common Name In America?

The main script file is most-common-name.R

There are four input files:

  • state-pop.csv - Total population and Hispanic population by state.
  • surnames.csv - Data on surnames from the U.S. Census Bureau, including a breakdown by race/ethnicity.
  • aging-curve.csv - Data from the Social Security Administration on the chances that someone born in the decade shown was still alive in 2013: http://www.ssa.gov/oact/NOTES/as120/LifeTables_Tbl_7.html
  • adjustments.csv - Taken directly from Lee Hartman's article: http://mypage.siu.edu/lhartman/johnsmith.html.

And five output files:

  • adjusted-name-combinations-list.csv - Adjusted estimates for the most common full names.
  • adjusted-name-combinations-matrix.csv - The same data from the file adjusted-name-combinations-list.csv but in matrix form. These are the estimates presented in the second (and final) table of the article.
  • independent-name-combinations-by-pop.csv - Matrix of estimates for the top 100 most common first names by top 100 most common surnames. These were calculated using independent odds, and displayed in the first table presented in the article.
  • new-top-firstNames.csv - Final estimated ranking of top first names.
  • new-top-surnames.csv - Final estimated ranking of top surnames.

Data license: CC Attribution 4.0 License · Data source: fivethirtyeight/data on GitHub · About: simonw/fivethirtyeight-datasette

51 rows

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Link rowid ▼ state totalPop hispPop
1 1 Alabama 4,779,736 185,602
2 2 Alaska 710,231 39,249
3 3 Arizona 6,392,017 1,895,149
4 4 Arkansas 2,915,918 186,050
5 5 California 37,253,956 14,013,719
6 6 Colorado 5,029,196 1,038,687
7 7 Connecticut 3,574,097 479,087
8 8 Delaware 897,934 73,221
9 9 District of Columbia 601,723 54,749
10 10 Florida 18,801,310 4,223,806
11 11 Georgia 9,687,653 853,689
12 12 Hawaii 1,360,301 120,842
13 13 Idaho 1,567,582 175,901
14 14 Illinois 12,830,632 2,027,578
15 15 Indiana 6,483,802 389,707
16 16 Iowa 3,046,355 151,544
17 17 Kansas 2,853,118 300,042
18 18 Kentucky 4,339,367 132,836
19 19 Louisiana 4,533,372 192,560
20 20 Maine 1,328,361 16,935
21 21 Maryland 5,773,552 470,632
22 22 Massachusetts 6,547,629 627,654
23 23 Michigan 9,883,640 436,358
24 24 Minnesota 5,303,925 250,258
25 25 Mississippi 2,967,297 81,481
26 26 Missouri 5,988,927 212,470
27 27 Montana 989,415 28,565
28 28 Nebraska 1,826,341 167,405
29 29 Nevada 2,700,551 716,501
30 30 New Hampshire 1,316,470 36,704
31 31 New Jersey 8,791,894 1,555,144
32 32 New Mexico 2,059,179 953,403
33 33 New York 19,378,102 3,416,922
34 34 North Carolina 9,535,483 800,120
35 35 North Dakota 672,591 13,467
36 36 Ohio 11,536,504 354,674
37 37 Oklahoma 3,751,351 332,007
38 38 Oregon 3,831,074 450,062
39 39 Pennsylvania 12,702,379 719,660
40 40 Rhode Island 1,052,567 130,655
41 41 South Carolina 4,625,364 235,682
42 42 South Dakota 814,180 22,119
43 43 Tennessee 6,346,105 290,059
44 44 Texas 25,145,561 9,460,921
45 45 Utah 2,763,885 358,340
46 46 Vermont 625,741 9,208
47 47 Virginia 8,001,024 631,825
48 48 Washington 6,724,540 755,790
49 49 West Virginia 1,852,994 22,268
50 50 Wisconsin 5,686,986 336,056
51 51 Wyoming 563,626 50,231

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CREATE TABLE "most-common-name/state-pop" (
"state" TEXT,
  "totalPop" TEXT,
  "hispPop" TEXT
);