What's in a Name?

In the sidebar on the right I have a link to WolframAlpha, which I use a lot for reference information like when I “need” to find out how many deuterium atoms can be found in a one gallon sample of water. The black helicopters can land on Agmorion's lawn, not mine – I'm just a consultant.

It's not just for nerdy stuff, though. you can use it for quite a few things you may or may not have a need for.
 Pretty much anything that is quantifiable can be found here just by typing, in somewhat standard English, the question you want answered and the "computational knowledge engine" interprets what you want and does its best to present you with an answer.  A lot of the time it returns a frustrating response of "WolframAlpha doesn't know how to interpret your input".

 At least I think it does.  I know it used to.  I couldn't remember the exact phrasing of the error in the paragraph above so I tried to make it return one on purpose.  I typed in "number of pigs in Sweden" and it immediately came back with 1.68 million, along with a population graph from 1961 to 2007 and the population of cattle, chickens, and sheep in that country as well. 

 Ok, Mister Helpful, how about answering this one: "what is the square root of a pig"?  It came back with 30,303.  This, it explained, is the square root of the estimated world population of pigs (918 million - China has the most with 426 million and Saint Pierre and Miquelon has the fewest (reporting, anyway) with just 30 little piggies).

 Fine.  Forget the pigs.  Let's try these questions: 

• Why is the sky blue?
• How many roads must a man walk down?
• What is your favorite color?
• What is the average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?
• How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?
• How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
• Are you Skynet?
• Who is Keyser Soze?
• Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near?
• Why did the chicken cross the road?
• What came first, the chicken or the egg?

Fun, but no errors.  Let's try "ZZYZX".  Ahhh... there's the error. I had the wording right after all.  That'll teach you to out-nerd me... [Editor's Note 09/26: I meant to type XYZZY here, which, of course, does not result in an error...]

 Want to find out what the low temperature was on Halloween in 1980 in Lockport, NY?  Just ask (54F - that was a Friday, btw).  How old is Oprah?  56 years, 7 months, 23 days (the sun rose at 7:11 AM that morning in NYC the day she was born).  When is Easter in the year 2337?  April 18th.  We are also told that will be the 332nd anniversary of Adobe Systems acquiring Macromedia, and the 400th anniversary of Leon Trotsky's call to overthrow Stalin. 

 Another thing it is fun to use it for - convoluted-sounding familial relationships.  For example, who is your cousin's mother's grand-daughter's uncle? Well, still your cousin, related by 1/16th blood, it turns out.  Neat little genealogical tree, too.

 Speaking of family relations...

 A huge fraction of my son's church and school friends have names end in the sound "en" (-an, -en, -on).  Grayson, Ian, Jayden, Hayden, Logan, Brendon, Owen, Ethan, Evan, etc... it's a little much for me to remember, although my wife has absolutely no problems and scolds me about my social mental lapses often. 

 "Which one is Ian again?" I ask?  "You know, the small boy that used to be at Ethan's daycare.  His mom is the nice one I told you about a couple of weeks ago," the wife says.  "Oh, yeah, I remember," I lie un-apologetically, opting to pull the plug on the conversation right then and there instead of putting it on uselessly sputtering life support for the next 15 minutes.

 I don't pay attention very well.  Hell, she probably could have said "He's the unbelievably foul-mouthed, bright orange two-year-old with the switchblade and the gift of flight" and I would have probably reacted the very same way.

 I suck.

 Still, it seems more than coincidence that such a large fraction of the kids have such "similar" names. Let's type the "en" names into WolframAlpha and see what we come up with.

 The most interesting thing you see when typing any of those names is that the popularity for pretty much all of them stays fairly flat from 1880 then really starts to climb starting in 2000 or later. 

 Looking at the "most common age" for those names, weighting them with the "expected total number alive today" and comparing that number with the age distribution of the population of the USA, you find that 10% of all the male children under five years of age have one of the 8 boys' names listed above.

 That might not seem impressive but considering the thousands of possible names that are out there, that is a huge percentage!    That's more than "coincidence" or "statistical clustering", my friends - it's more like a "policy" or a "movement".

 No wonder I can't distinguish one kid from another when I hear their name - it's like I live on effing Krypton (Jor-el, Kal-el, Zor-el, etc.) or something! It has nothing to do with my Herculean lack of focu...

 Say, did you know that the word krypton was coined 112 years ago, has a Scrabble score of 16, and corresponds to telephone keypad digits 579-7866?  WolframAlpha does, and now, so do I.

 Temporarily, anyway.