What's in a name?

My latest assignment in my data class was to use a data visualization tool to create a story using any data I wanted. I decided to look at baby names and, in particular, my baby's name. I went to the Social Security website's baby name section to look up the data.

First, I looked up the most popular boy names in the U.S. for 2014. Then, I pulled data from each state and found how many babies were named Harrison in 2014 for each state. Then I realized that that didn't tell the whole story, since obviously a state with 1 million people is likely to have significantly more Harrisons than a state with 1,000. So I went to the Census website and looked up 2014 population estimates by state, to provide context. Finally, I looked up the popularity of the name Harrison in the U.S. from 1900 to 2014.

Once I'd gathered all the data and made it readable (ugh, spreadsheets), I plugged it into the visualization tool, and out popped my story (well, after quite a bit of tweaking and arranging, I did have to do some work):

I think this last part, about how Harrison spiked in popularity after the first Star Wars movie came out, is the most interesting thing. Especially since that's pretty much why we named our baby Harrison (Han for short). ;)

I like that this class is forcing me to step outside my comfort zone, yet I can do it with things that actually interest me, so it's not so hard.