9 ms·

A map of the US where city names are replaced by most Wikipedia’ed resident

630 points by brandonhall 7y ago

karmakaze 7y ago
This is awesome. Fun to zoom in/out and see the names fade in and out.
- danielsf 7y ago
  Thanks!
- ufo 7y ago
  I'm impressed by how responsive the zooming is.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
cure 7y ago
Curious. Why are they almost all men? And, what's with all the wrestlers!?!
- rwcarlsen 7y ago
  Probably because many of these people are historical figures and - historical records exhibit significant bias toward info about men.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- vpmpaul 7y ago
  Are you implying the results are doctored in some way?
  - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
    I believe a more charitable interpretation is wondering why men are searched more often than women when it comes to the data set "people wikipedia'd correlated with location".
- gereshes 7y ago
  Until recently (and still today but to a lesser extent) women were excluded from certain professions (politics, science, engineering, ...) or were not given proper recognition for their contributions (Ex: Margaret Keane, Katherine Johnson, Rosalind Franklin, ...)
- acheron 7y ago
  IIRC one of the most controversial/edit-warred Wikipedia pages is wresting-related. (Can't find the reference I'm thinking of right now though, so [citation needed] I guess.) Germans love David Hasselhoff, and Wikipedians love wrestling.
- tdb7893 7y ago
  I don't follow wrestling but I've googled some wrestlers before. Their stories (both on and off stage) are often super convoluted and interesting/funny.
- reallydude 7y ago
  See Gwen Stefani from both Anaheim and Fullerton, California. She grew up in fullerton but famously got neighbors agitated from her own rental in Anaheim. Perfecting "I'm just a girl" out of her garage took a long time.
- sonnyblarney 7y ago
  Because wrestling is hugely popular.
rawrmaan 7y ago
I love this! Thanks for sharing!
xvedejas 7y ago
I'm surprised that George R R Martin doesn't show up for Santa Fe. Surely he's more-googled / wikipediaed than Murray Gell-Mann?
- genera1 7y ago
  Gell-Mann recently died, so it probably skews the results
- sudosteph 7y ago
  I think it has do with how they're pulling the data. GRRM doesn't seem to appear on the wikipedia category page for people from Santa Fe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People_from_Santa_Fe,_New_Mexico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People_from_Santa_Fe,...
  - drivers99 7y ago
    That has a link to here, where he's listed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Writers_from_Santa_Fe,_New_Mexico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Writers_from_Santa_Fe... Edited 2015. So they must not have pulled this data.
rwcarlsen 7y ago
Interesting to see Elon Musk as LA.
- sb52191 7y ago
  Probably because of the Boring Company press about building tunnels under the city.
  - WilliamEdward 7y ago
    I think Spacex being located in LA is the more likely candidate.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - 0xffff2 7y ago
      SpaceX is located in Hawthorne (just south of LA), which has its own dot. It seems that there dataset is just Wikipedia's own lists of people from places. In this case, Elon Musk appears on [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_from_Los_Angeles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_from_Los_Angele...
- __HYde 7y ago
  Probably because his residence is listed as "Bel Air, Los Angeles, California" on his Wikipedia page.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
SilasX 7y ago
Hm, I would also be interested in how cities look if your measure is "highest lookup rate relative to national average". That is, sure, Dwayne Johnson is looked up a lot in some city, but who is looked up most compared to everywhere else?
- Qwertystop 7y ago
  It's not "people from here look up this person a lot", it's "who is the most-looked-up person that's linked to here <somehow>", where <somehow> is whatever dataset they're using to connect people to places (it's not birthplace; it might be lived-here-at-some-point? or "has the place mentioned in their Wikipedia page", or some composite). The location of the searcher is irrelevant.
JCharante 7y ago
Interesting.. I've literally never heard of Anna Kendrick before.
- reallydude 7y ago
  She's a B-list movie star who does some indie stuff. * She was in two of the Twilight films. * Pitch Perfect (trilogy). * Mr. Right. The Accountant. (hitmen with a heart of gold movies). * A Simple Favor. (stepford wife mystery). * Drinking Buddies (a brewery drama, it's great) * Scott Pilgrim vs The World
  - drivers99 7y ago
    Scott Pilgrim vs The World
  - 3wolf 7y ago
    B-list is pretty harsh. She has an Oscar nomination (albeit 10 years ago), and the Pitch Perfect movies made $$$.
    - reallydude 7y ago
      Most people can't name her. She's a great actress. That's not contradictory.
      - reallydude 7y ago
        see: https://worldwidevitalpr.wordpress.com/2014/09/08/learn-the-difference-between-a-list-b-list-c-list-and-d-list-actors-celebrities/ https://worldwidevitalpr.wordpress.com/2014/09/08/learn-the-... Nicholas Cage is definitely more famous than Anna Kendrick, for differing reasons.
    - newsgremlin 7y ago
      That list of accolades makes me think B-list is generous... even if I do have a crush on her.
  - 7y ago
hkmurakami 7y ago
So it's not "this is the person most wikipediaed in this city" but rather, "this is the person amongst those who are affiliated with this city, who is the most wikipediaed"
- jessriedel 7y ago
  Your two version aren't in conflict, although the first is ambiguous. Are you just clarifying that that, in the first version, "in this city" is supposed to be a modifier of "person" rather than the "wikipediaed"?
  - 0xffff2 7y ago
    They are totally different things. The first is influenced solely by Wikipedia users in the city in question. The second is influenced by a combination of all Wikipedia users and Wikipedia's association of people with the city in question.
    - jessriedel 7y ago
      I understand the claim but I'm disputing it
- greiskul 7y ago
  Is this why San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Mountain View are all Steve Jobs?
  - lukasb 7y ago
    SF shouldn't be associated with SJ in my opinion. He lived and worked in the peninsula and just came up here to give talks.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
electricslpnsld 7y ago
Using Wikipedia leads to some weird results. I checked my hometown in NC and would have expected Michael Jordan to be listed as the most famous associated person, but he doesn’t appear on the main Wikipedia entry so we instead got James Taylor.
- nepeckman 7y ago
  I saw the same thing, so I checked the Micheal Jordan Wikipedia page and it actually does not contain the text "Chapel Hill".
reaperducer 7y ago
That was surprisingly interesting; especially when you zoom in to the small towns.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
magissima 7y ago
"Those connected to and victims of criminal acts" are supposed to be excluded, so Ted Bundy should probably be removed from Burlington and Salt Lake City. edit: and while I'm looking at Lake Champlain, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold are in Plattsburgh, NY, though the link doesn't work. edit 2: Oops, I read "including" as "excluding" because that's what I expected, never mind!
- jonfriese33 7y ago
  Where do you see that? I see this: "Note: any person on Wikipedia is considered, including those connected to and victims of criminal acts. See more about our data and method."
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  It says in the header that they include them. At least on mobile.
busterarm 7y ago
Doesn't seem to work in Firefox/Linux/Privacy mode. (Ahh, WebGL)
acheron 7y ago
The connection seems to be "a link to this city's Wikipedia page appears in the named person's Wikipedia page". It does not look like the contents of the city's page have any bearing, only the person's page.
- sudosteph 7y ago
  Yes, this is what I've seen too. Basically if the person's individual wikipedia page has a category at the bottom like "People from X city", then they will be included in the rankings for the city. So it leaves out a bunch of people who were missing that tag. It would be cool if they could also include the "Notable People" for each city in this ranking in the future.
- Fezzik 7y ago
  That’s made obvious by Steve Jobs having an oversized presence on the map in Portland, Oregon... having only gone to college there briefly, before dropping out, and having no other connection to the city. He was more like a visitor than a resident.
- sparky_z 7y ago
  That can't be right, or at leats not the whole story. For example, "Joaquin Pheonix" is the most searched person from Gainesville. But there's no mention of Gainesville, or even the state of Florida, on his Wikipedia page. But it does appear to be true that he was a "resident" (more or less) during his teenage years [0]. [0] https://www.gainesville.com/article/LK/20040526/News/604159905/GS/ https://www.gainesville.com/article/LK/20040526/News/6041599... EDIT: However, he is on Wikipedia's "List of People from Gainesville, FL" [1], so I bet those lists were the primary source of information. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_from_Gainesville,_Florida https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_from_Gainesvill...
  - anamexis 7y ago
    They explicitly say that in their "data and methods" blurb: > Person/city associations were based on the thousands of “People from X city” pages on Wikipedia. The top person from each city was determined by using median pageviews (with a minimum of 1 year of traffic). We chose to include multiple occurrences for a single person because there is both no way to determine which is more accurate and people can “be from” multiple places.
ddxxdd 7y ago
What tools are used to create this?
gremlinsinc 7y ago
I'm from Utah....I love how Ted Bundy is #1 for not just Salt lake but looks like the whole state. Edit: I'm living in utah, from Ohio, I do not claim Utah citizenship. I'm also not Mormon (ex-mormon/agnostic). Cheers!
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  Robert Redford comes up ironically enough for Provo. I thought his house was in Park City, but I guess it’s a weird city limits thing. Hope he isn’t letting any unmarried couples stay over!
rmason 7y ago
Expected Lansing would be Magic Johnson but instead its Larry Page. Magic comes back often and is active in local charities, even leading efforts to raise money for college scholarships. On the other hand Larry Page has to my knowledge never returned or given a dime to local charities. So perhaps that makes people ever more curious about him.
- sparky_z 7y ago
  It's not "The person people from Lansing searched the most." It's "the person from Lansing that people search the most". Worldwide, Larry Page is certainly more of a public figure than Magic Johnson.
  - sonnyblarney 7y ago
    "Worldwide, Larry Page is certainly more of a public figure than Magic Johnson." This is HN bubble thinking. Very few regular people know who 'Larry Page' is. Almost everyone knows who 'Magic Johnson' is. Have a look at Google search trends.
    - fhoffa 7y ago
      Not really. This is people looking at Wikipedia. Guess: Who's the Alan with the most pageviews in Wikipedia? Who's the Steve? I left the answers here: - https://medium.com/towards-data-science/bigquery-without-a-credit-card-discover-learn-and-share-199e08d4a064 https://medium.com/towards-data-science/bigquery-without-a-c... Basically a show-off for BigQuery, but to answer this specific question: The most viewed Alan and Steve in Wikipedia are the ones closer to HN. SELECT title, SUM(views) views FROM `fh-bigquery.wikipedia_v3.pageviews_2019` WHERE DATE(datehour) BETWEEN '2019-01-01' AND '2019-01-10' AND wiki='en' AND title LIKE r'Alan\_%' GROUP BY title ORDER BY views DESC LIMIT 10
      - sonnyblarney 7y ago
        "Worldwide, Larry Page is certainly more of a public figure than Magic Johnson." Is what I responded to. Don't misconstrue how much people do not care about business people, and how much they do care about sports figures. Nobody in my family knows who Larry Page is.
itronitron 7y ago
Vienna, VA >> Robert Hanssen
duxup 7y ago
I'm not opposed to renaming Minneapolis, "Prince Town"...
- mark-r 7y ago
  He shows up twice though, once for Minneapolis and once for Chanhassen.
  - duxup 7y ago
    Prince Town and Other Prince Town
    - dredmorbius 7y ago
      ... and the town formerly known as ...
dillonmckay 7y ago
It seems to be the person has lived there at any point in their life? Southwest Florida is an interesting one...
brianbreslin 7y ago
Funny how a porn star is the #1 for Miami Beach. I would have expected some other kind of celebrity.
baddox 7y ago
It's too bad there are so many duplicates. I think it would be more interesting if it was based on birthplace, since big cities that attract lots of businesspeople/celebrities just get tagged with someone really famous who doesn't have any particular connection with the city (e.g. Elon Musk on Los Angeles, Steve Jobs on basically everywhere in the Bay Area). The Wikidata "place of birth" field would probably be a reasonably reliable source: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P19 https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P19
- snazz 7y ago
  Birthplace would be interesting, but there’s plenty of famous/important people who are connected to a location other than their birthplace. Think sports stars who were on a team far away from their home.
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    Maybe, but it's still lame that Denver is represented by Peyton Manning. He was there a few years, but he isn't even the first person that the phrase "Denver quarterback" calls to mind.
    - jjuel 7y ago
      I mean that probably proves he is Wiki'ed much more than John Elway. Mostly a recency thing I would guess.
  - baddox 7y ago
    Right, but I think that's a problem for large cities like Los Angeles. There's nothing particularly "Los Angeles" about Elon Musk that I know of, he's just really famous and (maybe?) happens to live there. And with birthplace, I think it's pretty interesting to browse the map for random tiny towns no one has heard of that happen to be the birthplaces of very famous people.
    - 0xffff2 7y ago
Bjorkbat 7y ago
I was kinda surprised by the Los Alamos result. I was expecting Oppenheimer, instead it was some guy named Drew Goddard.
maxander 7y ago
This is interesting in large part as a demonstration of how bizarre/indefinite the idea of being "from" a place is. For instance, Cambridge, MA isn't headlined by a famous MIT/Harvard academic, or local political figure, or even Neil Gaiman- but instead by Bhumibol Adulyadej, the previous king of Thailand, who was born there while his father was studying at Harvard, and left at the age of 2. Meanwhile, Boston gets John Cena, who was born in a far-out suburb.
- mcguire 7y ago
  That is strange; most places I checked were dominated by figures from popular culture. Huntsville, AL, for example...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- rhcom2 7y ago
  No mention of Bruce Springsteen along the entire Jersey shore too.
  - vonmoltke 7y ago
    He's attached to Bradley Beach. Oddly, his actual birthplace (Long Branch) went to Audrey Hepburn's first husband.
  - moate 7y ago
    Jersey shore resident under the age of 100 here: Good! /s That said, it's very weird. he's listed on wikipedia as tagged with "People from..." several towns in Monmouth county. Max Weinberg takes one town, but several of the towns Bruce is listed with are taken over by relatively unknown people (Sorry Mel Ferrer and Charlie Puth)
- umanwizard 7y ago
  Another point is that in some parts of the country the concept of “city” breaks down. There is basically no meaningful difference between being from suburban neighborhoods of Glendale, AZ and nearby suburban neighborhoods of Phoenix. (People who are too young to be dealing with water bills, garbage collection, etc. often don’t even know which one they live in). Even the US Postal Service doesn’t necessarily respect local political boundaries. I grew up in Phoenix, close to the Glendale border, and my address said “Glendale, AZ”.
CWuestefeld 7y ago
Some surprising holes, of towns with famous people but aren't showing at all. For example * Jayson Williams, NBA player and murderer, Alexandria NJ * Malcolm Baldridge, US Secretary of Commerce, Woodbury CT Ninja edit: but I'm glad to see Dennis Ritchie in Summit, NJ
komali2 7y ago
Ah fuck, what a good idea and fun project this must have been. How do people come up with awesome ideas like this? Whenever I have time for a personal project it'll be like... "guess I'll uh.... make this LED on a raspberry pi blink... wheee"
- pizza 7y ago
  I would bet you probably come up with a really good idea about once a week, and that's being conservative. The trick is just to store them in some always-accessible note taking app (e.g. Evernote, OneNote, Apple's Notes app) as soon as they come to you (i.e. in the middle of a totally unrelated lecture), and accumulate them over a long period of time (talking years here).
  - danielsf 7y ago
    OP here. This idea was from looking at this map. https://www.wearedorothy.com/collections/music/products/u-s-a-song-map-open-edition https://www.wearedorothy.com/collections/music/products/u-s-...
    - jen729w 7y ago
      It’s beautiful, and reminds me of an idea that I had ... hint ... hint. I live in Melbourne, Australia. Idle Googling led me to the discovery that someone had rated – as in on Maps, with stars – a tram stop. A municipal function, a concrete slab, a place you must necessarily and unavoidably go if you want a tram. Rated. People! Crazy. So I want a map that, at the level of ‘Melbourne’, aggregates the Google review for everything in view and gives the entire city a score. Then as I zoom in, eventually to the tram stop, I see the ratings of individual things. Ultimately I suppose you’d be able to zoom out to the world and see its Google review score.
      - onychomys 7y ago
        That would probably just end up being a map of economic conditions in any given section of town. The seedy parts will be lower rated overall (even if there's a highly rated ethnic food joint or whatever), while the swanky parts will have nicer things. That's my guess, although I think you should still do it, because I might be totally wrong. And interesting patterns might still appear even if I'm right.
billwear 7y ago
Well, you did miss Jimmy Wales, who grew up in Huntsville, AL, and attended Randolph School there. How did you select your data?
sampo 7y ago
> Data and Methods > Data for this story were collected and processed using the Wikipedia API. The period of collection was from July, 2015–May, 2019, from English Wikipedia. It was inspired in part by this map. > Person/city associations were based on the thousands of “People from X city” pages on Wikipedia. The top person from each city was determined by using median pageviews (with a minimum of 1 year of traffic). We chose to include multiple occurrences for a single person because there is both no way to determine which is more accurate and people can “be from” multiple places.
- eesmith 7y ago
  There is a flaw in their method. Take for example Santa Fe, New Mexico. I expected the most Wikipediaed person would be George R. R. Martin. Instead, it's Murray Gell-Mann. Odd. I mean, yes, famous physicist, coiner of 'quark', etc. But, c'mon, compared to George R. R. Martin? Then go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People_from_Santa_Fe,_New_Mexico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People_from_Santa_Fe,... . While Gell-Mann is on that page, there are also seven subcategories. - Actors from Santa Fe, New Mexico‎ (2 C, 16 P) - Archbishops of Santa Fe‎ (12 P) - Artists from Santa Fe, New Mexico‎ (78 P) - Musicians from Santa Fe, New Mexico‎ (16 P) - Politicians from Santa Fe, New Mexico‎ (1 C, 26 P) - Sportspeople from Santa Fe, New Mexico‎ (11 P) - Writers from Santa Fe, New Mexico‎ GRRM is in that last subcategory. However, it appears to be an uncommon pattern. I tried another 15 or so cities and none of them used subcategories.
  - quacked 7y ago
    Well, Gell-Mann just died, so it could be one of those "whoever is in the news more recently gets the most pageviews" effects. Sort of like how any mildly funny post on a growing subreddit will become top/all time simply because a lot of people looked at it that day. The next day, there will be even more people to look at it, etc.
    - eesmith 7y ago
      "The period of collection was from July, 2015–May, 2019" and it seems unlikely that a one week bump due to Gell-Mann's recent death would be enough to change the balance. I don't know how to get page view statistics from the Wikipedia API to double-check this.
jlarocco 7y ago
Doesn't work for me in Firefox. If web developers aren't going to bother with cross-browser compatibility it'd be nice if they at least went back to telling visitors which browsers they do support.
- Estyn 7y ago
  Works for me in Firefox 67
- howard941 7y ago
  Me too. It likes FF 67.0 64 bit on win but dislikes FF 67.0 on 64 bit FreeBSD. The mapbox URLs aren't called on the latter. Are you also on a unix-like system?
  - jlarocco 7y ago
    Yep, Debian. Other map sites work fine for me (caltopo.com, ridewithgps.com).
    - howard941 7y ago
      Yup same here, other mapping sites are just fine. Do you have a User-Agent masquerader add on available? I have no connectivity to my freebsd box at home now (no, thank you Frontier) or I'd try it and report back. But for the browser dependency it's a good looking site.
- danmg 7y ago
  worked for me on palemoon
- rueynshard 7y ago
  Works for me (FF on Ubuntu)
- ascorbic 7y ago
  Works for me with FF 68 on Mac
sampo 7y ago
I don't think Lynyrd Skynyrd from Jacksonville FL is a person.
gwbas1c 7y ago
How do I zoom?
- danmg 7y ago
  mouse wheel.
- rconti 7y ago
  double tap to zoom in on my trackpad. don't know how to zoom out.
  - cristoperb 7y ago
    shift+double click zooms out for me.
clairity 7y ago
we sure do love our entertainers! a little interest makes sense but i've never understood the intense interest that most people have with entertainers and celebrities in general. i'm more interested in people who have, and can, impact my life, like historical figures, friends, family, scientists, and local/regional leaders (political or otherwise).
repstosw 7y ago
Good job, Oak Harbor, WA.
okmokmz 7y ago
I'm a bit disappointing that Mr Hands, the guy that died from getting penetrated by a horse, isn't the most Wikipedia'ed resident of Enumclaw Story for anyone interested https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enumclaw_horse_sex_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enumclaw_horse_sex_case
the_watcher 7y ago
This is really cool! Something that would be nice would be an option to toggle "born in/native" vs. "any association." My hometown, La Quinta, California, has Phil Knight simply because he has a home there. No one I know associates him with La Quinta.
pgt 7y ago
It would be cool to see the same map for people worldwide, not just in the US.
e40 7y ago
Muhammad Ali was born in Louisville, KY and not Paradise Valley (CA?). Wikipedia says this. Noticed this right off the bat.
- Retra 7y ago
  Birthplace isn't the criteria, residence is.
patorjk 7y ago
This got me to update Edward Norton's wikipedia entry. He's most likely the most famous person from Columbia, Maryland, he just wasn't categorized as from the town. Though it was interesting seeing Randy Pausch (computer scientist) listed as the town's rep.
dual_basis 7y ago
Really was expecting this to be an XKCD thing.
wharnal 7y ago
They've got an interesting definition of city... Seattle is all one city, but DC has Georgetown, Capitol Hill, and Dupont Circle in addition to a label for the entire city.
- moate 7y ago
  Go look at how far NYC gets broken down. Weird choices.
- graywh 7y ago
  It's based on what wikipedia pages exist. Several neighborhoods in my city are on this map, but nearby incorporated cites are not.
redleggedfrog 7y ago
Why isn't Linus used for Portland?! Steve Jobs. Pfft.
- defen 7y ago
  Torvalds or Pauling?
  - redleggedfrog 7y ago
    Torvalds!
jonny_eh 7y ago
Why US only?
keiferski 7y ago
This is interesting as an example of how a person can be well-known yet their biographical details unknown. Andy Warhol is a good example. Almost everyone in America knows his name and yet (in my experience) almost no one knows that he grew up in Pittsburgh (outside of Pittsburgh, of course.)
sampleinajar 7y ago
Nitpick: Allen Iverson is from Hampton, Va. Hampton Roads is a name for the region that includes 5+ cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampton_Roads https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampton_Roads
- ben010783 7y ago
  The map seems like it doesn't specifically stick to municipalities. In New York City it gets granular enough to show that Sylvester Stallone was born in Hell's Kitchen. But for the city of Chicago, it only shows Barack Obama.
soperj 7y ago
Weird that they have Kurt Cobain in Montesano, not Aberdeen.
dlivingston 7y ago
Very cool, but...Murray Gell-Man for Santa Fe? Not George R.R. Martin? Drew Goddard for Los Alamos, not Richard Feynman?
- jhbadger 7y ago
  Besides the physics, Gell-Mann is known for the place that makes Santa Fe known to people who have no idea where it is -- the famous Santa Fe Institute.
deedubaya 7y ago
This was really cool to look at. This was really educational having grown up in a rural area where (I thought) no one of consequence came from. Thanks for sharing!
digikata 7y ago
I think it would be interesting if they filtered out any entertainment & sports celebrities to see who remained.
chrisg3 7y ago
This is very cool! Maybe you could add Puerto Rico as well.
leroy_masochist 7y ago
Danny DeVito upsets The Boss in Asbury Park! Did not see that one coming. Any other notable upsets?
serf 7y ago
question : why do WWE-related queries account for so much Wikipedia traffic?
- pembrook 7y ago
  Wrestling is massively massively popular...on a scale that most people in upper middle class bubbles do not realize.
kitotik 7y ago
Marilyn Monroe -> Compton was unexpected…
tompetry 7y ago
This is a super cool project. Spot checking WA state (where I was born and still live), the results are accurate and interesting! There are some comments about wanting to resolve duplicates (though duplicates are intentional), would be neat to include a "Born in this city" setting. I believe if the person was born in X city, they would show up in the "List of people from X" page - so not many changes needed. Bravo!
JshWright 7y ago
Ok, that was way more interesting than I expected... A few bits that are interesting to me (and probably no one else). The two towns I've lived in are both renamed Grover Cleveland (he was born in one, and spent most of his childhood in the other). Megyn Kelly attended elementary school in the next town over from where I live currently.
bryanrasmussen 7y ago
I think I'd go with largest Wikipedia article, probably in most cases the same.
lorenzorhoades 7y ago
Elon Musk has LA? hahahaha
Thorrez 7y ago
I wonder why James Earl Jones isn't listed for Jackson, MI. His page contains a link to Jackson, and Jackson's page contains a link to him. His page has more views than than Paula Faris'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Earl_Jones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Earl_Jones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson,_Michigan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson,_Michigan https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&start=2015-07&end=2019-04&pages=James_Earl_Jones|Paula_Faris https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/?project=en.wikipedia.or...
- eesmith 7y ago
  Because the creators of the map got their list of names from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People_from_Jackson,_Michigan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People_from_Jackson,_... . Paula Faris is in that list. James Earl Jones is not. Yes, there is overlap between that category page and the "Notable people" under https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson,_Michigan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson,_Michigan .
proy24 7y ago
aah I always knew Sarah Palin was famous for something...didn't know until now she is from Alaska.
ptah 7y ago
Interesting, it should be fun to extend this to the rest of the world
kitd 7y ago
Louisville, KY: Tom Cruise (born in Syracuse, NY, but parents born there) replaces Muhammed Ali (by far most famous native). Seems a bit unfair.
rotten 7y ago
The controls are terrible. I can't figure out how to zoom, and if I right click I get into some sort of "tilt" mode that can't be escaped from without reloading the page.
doktrin 7y ago
TIL Samuel L. Jackson is the most wikipedia'd person who's ever lived in Washington DC. That's kind of wild considering the competition includes every US president ever, among many others.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
garfieldnate 7y ago
No fair, Ted Bundy gets Tallahassee AND Salt Lake City?

630 points by brandonhall 7y ago

karmakaze 7y ago

This is awesome. Fun to zoom in/out and see the names fade in and out.

danielsf 7y ago
Thanks!
ufo 7y ago
I'm impressed by how responsive the zooming is.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

cure 7y ago

Curious. Why are they almost all men? And, what's with all the wrestlers!?!

rwcarlsen 7y ago
Probably because many of these people are historical figures and - historical records exhibit significant bias toward info about men.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
vpmpaul 7y ago
Are you implying the results are doctored in some way?
- SolaceQuantum 7y ago
  I believe a more charitable interpretation is wondering why men are searched more often than women when it comes to the data set "people wikipedia'd correlated with location".
gereshes 7y ago
Until recently (and still today but to a lesser extent) women were excluded from certain professions (politics, science, engineering, ...) or were not given proper recognition for their contributions (Ex: Margaret Keane, Katherine Johnson, Rosalind Franklin, ...)
acheron 7y ago
IIRC one of the most controversial/edit-warred Wikipedia pages is wresting-related. (Can't find the reference I'm thinking of right now though, so [citation needed] I guess.) Germans love David Hasselhoff, and Wikipedians love wrestling.
tdb7893 7y ago
I don't follow wrestling but I've googled some wrestlers before. Their stories (both on and off stage) are often super convoluted and interesting/funny.
reallydude 7y ago
See Gwen Stefani from both Anaheim and Fullerton, California. She grew up in fullerton but famously got neighbors agitated from her own rental in Anaheim. Perfecting "I'm just a girl" out of her garage took a long time.
sonnyblarney 7y ago
Because wrestling is hugely popular.

rawrmaan 7y ago

I love this! Thanks for sharing!

xvedejas 7y ago

I'm surprised that George R R Martin doesn't show up for Santa Fe. Surely he's more-googled / wikipediaed than Murray Gell-Mann?

genera1 7y ago
Gell-Mann recently died, so it probably skews the results
sudosteph 7y ago
I think it has do with how they're pulling the data. GRRM doesn't seem to appear on the wikipedia category page for people from Santa Fe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People_from_Santa_Fe,_New_Mexico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People_from_Santa_Fe,...
- drivers99 7y ago
  That has a link to here, where he's listed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Writers_from_Santa_Fe,_New_Mexico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Writers_from_Santa_Fe... Edited 2015. So they must not have pulled this data.

rwcarlsen 7y ago

Interesting to see Elon Musk as LA.

sb52191 7y ago
Probably because of the Boring Company press about building tunnels under the city.
- WilliamEdward 7y ago
  I think Spacex being located in LA is the more likely candidate.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - 0xffff2 7y ago
    SpaceX is located in Hawthorne (just south of LA), which has its own dot. It seems that there dataset is just Wikipedia's own lists of people from places. In this case, Elon Musk appears on [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_from_Los_Angeles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_from_Los_Angele...
__HYde 7y ago
Probably because his residence is listed as "Bel Air, Los Angeles, California" on his Wikipedia page.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

SilasX 7y ago

Hm, I would also be interested in how cities look if your measure is "highest lookup rate relative to national average". That is, sure, Dwayne Johnson is looked up a lot in some city, but who is looked up most compared to everywhere else?

Qwertystop 7y ago
It's not "people from here look up this person a lot", it's "who is the most-looked-up person that's linked to here <somehow>", where <somehow> is whatever dataset they're using to connect people to places (it's not birthplace; it might be lived-here-at-some-point? or "has the place mentioned in their Wikipedia page", or some composite). The location of the searcher is irrelevant.

JCharante 7y ago

Interesting.. I've literally never heard of Anna Kendrick before.

reallydude 7y ago
She's a B-list movie star who does some indie stuff. * She was in two of the Twilight films. * Pitch Perfect (trilogy). * Mr. Right. The Accountant. (hitmen with a heart of gold movies). * A Simple Favor. (stepford wife mystery). * Drinking Buddies (a brewery drama, it's great) * Scott Pilgrim vs The World
- drivers99 7y ago
  Scott Pilgrim vs The World
- 3wolf 7y ago
  B-list is pretty harsh. She has an Oscar nomination (albeit 10 years ago), and the Pitch Perfect movies made $$$.
  - reallydude 7y ago
    Most people can't name her. She's a great actress. That's not contradictory.
    - reallydude 7y ago
      see: https://worldwidevitalpr.wordpress.com/2014/09/08/learn-the-difference-between-a-list-b-list-c-list-and-d-list-actors-celebrities/ https://worldwidevitalpr.wordpress.com/2014/09/08/learn-the-... Nicholas Cage is definitely more famous than Anna Kendrick, for differing reasons.
  - newsgremlin 7y ago
    That list of accolades makes me think B-list is generous... even if I do have a crush on her.
- 7y ago

hkmurakami 7y ago

So it's not "this is the person most wikipediaed in this city" but rather, "this is the person amongst those who are affiliated with this city, who is the most wikipediaed"

jessriedel 7y ago
Your two version aren't in conflict, although the first is ambiguous. Are you just clarifying that that, in the first version, "in this city" is supposed to be a modifier of "person" rather than the "wikipediaed"?
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  They are totally different things. The first is influenced solely by Wikipedia users in the city in question. The second is influenced by a combination of all Wikipedia users and Wikipedia's association of people with the city in question.
  - jessriedel 7y ago
    I understand the claim but I'm disputing it
greiskul 7y ago
Is this why San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Mountain View are all Steve Jobs?
- lukasb 7y ago
  SF shouldn't be associated with SJ in my opinion. He lived and worked in the peninsula and just came up here to give talks.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

electricslpnsld 7y ago

Using Wikipedia leads to some weird results. I checked my hometown in NC and would have expected Michael Jordan to be listed as the most famous associated person, but he doesn’t appear on the main Wikipedia entry so we instead got James Taylor.

nepeckman 7y ago
I saw the same thing, so I checked the Micheal Jordan Wikipedia page and it actually does not contain the text "Chapel Hill".

reaperducer 7y ago

That was surprisingly interesting; especially when you zoom in to the small towns.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

magissima 7y ago

"Those connected to and victims of criminal acts" are supposed to be excluded, so Ted Bundy should probably be removed from Burlington and Salt Lake City. edit: and while I'm looking at Lake Champlain, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold are in Plattsburgh, NY, though the link doesn't work. edit 2: Oops, I read "including" as "excluding" because that's what I expected, never mind!

jonfriese33 7y ago
Where do you see that? I see this: "Note: any person on Wikipedia is considered, including those connected to and victims of criminal acts. See more about our data and method."
bobthepanda 7y ago
It says in the header that they include them. At least on mobile.

busterarm 7y ago

Doesn't seem to work in Firefox/Linux/Privacy mode. (Ahh, WebGL)

acheron 7y ago

The connection seems to be "a link to this city's Wikipedia page appears in the named person's Wikipedia page". It does not look like the contents of the city's page have any bearing, only the person's page.

sudosteph 7y ago
Yes, this is what I've seen too. Basically if the person's individual wikipedia page has a category at the bottom like "People from X city", then they will be included in the rankings for the city. So it leaves out a bunch of people who were missing that tag. It would be cool if they could also include the "Notable People" for each city in this ranking in the future.
Fezzik 7y ago
That’s made obvious by Steve Jobs having an oversized presence on the map in Portland, Oregon... having only gone to college there briefly, before dropping out, and having no other connection to the city. He was more like a visitor than a resident.
sparky_z 7y ago
That can't be right, or at leats not the whole story. For example, "Joaquin Pheonix" is the most searched person from Gainesville. But there's no mention of Gainesville, or even the state of Florida, on his Wikipedia page. But it does appear to be true that he was a "resident" (more or less) during his teenage years [0]. [0] https://www.gainesville.com/article/LK/20040526/News/604159905/GS/ https://www.gainesville.com/article/LK/20040526/News/6041599... EDIT: However, he is on Wikipedia's "List of People from Gainesville, FL" [1], so I bet those lists were the primary source of information. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_from_Gainesville,_Florida https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_from_Gainesvill...
- anamexis 7y ago
  They explicitly say that in their "data and methods" blurb: > Person/city associations were based on the thousands of “People from X city” pages on Wikipedia. The top person from each city was determined by using median pageviews (with a minimum of 1 year of traffic). We chose to include multiple occurrences for a single person because there is both no way to determine which is more accurate and people can “be from” multiple places.

ddxxdd 7y ago

What tools are used to create this?

gremlinsinc 7y ago

I'm from Utah....I love how Ted Bundy is #1 for not just Salt lake but looks like the whole state. Edit: I'm living in utah, from Ohio, I do not claim Utah citizenship. I'm also not Mormon (ex-mormon/agnostic). Cheers!

seanmcdirmid 7y ago
Robert Redford comes up ironically enough for Provo. I thought his house was in Park City, but I guess it’s a weird city limits thing. Hope he isn’t letting any unmarried couples stay over!

rmason 7y ago

Expected Lansing would be Magic Johnson but instead its Larry Page. Magic comes back often and is active in local charities, even leading efforts to raise money for college scholarships. On the other hand Larry Page has to my knowledge never returned or given a dime to local charities. So perhaps that makes people ever more curious about him.

sparky_z 7y ago
It's not "The person people from Lansing searched the most." It's "the person from Lansing that people search the most". Worldwide, Larry Page is certainly more of a public figure than Magic Johnson.
- sonnyblarney 7y ago
  "Worldwide, Larry Page is certainly more of a public figure than Magic Johnson." This is HN bubble thinking. Very few regular people know who 'Larry Page' is. Almost everyone knows who 'Magic Johnson' is. Have a look at Google search trends.
  - fhoffa 7y ago
    Not really. This is people looking at Wikipedia. Guess: Who's the Alan with the most pageviews in Wikipedia? Who's the Steve? I left the answers here: - https://medium.com/towards-data-science/bigquery-without-a-credit-card-discover-learn-and-share-199e08d4a064 https://medium.com/towards-data-science/bigquery-without-a-c... Basically a show-off for BigQuery, but to answer this specific question: The most viewed Alan and Steve in Wikipedia are the ones closer to HN. SELECT title, SUM(views) views FROM `fh-bigquery.wikipedia_v3.pageviews_2019` WHERE DATE(datehour) BETWEEN '2019-01-01' AND '2019-01-10' AND wiki='en' AND title LIKE r'Alan\_%' GROUP BY title ORDER BY views DESC LIMIT 10
    - sonnyblarney 7y ago
      "Worldwide, Larry Page is certainly more of a public figure than Magic Johnson." Is what I responded to. Don't misconstrue how much people do not care about business people, and how much they do care about sports figures. Nobody in my family knows who Larry Page is.

itronitron 7y ago

Vienna, VA >> Robert Hanssen

duxup 7y ago

I'm not opposed to renaming Minneapolis, "Prince Town"...

mark-r 7y ago
He shows up twice though, once for Minneapolis and once for Chanhassen.
- duxup 7y ago
  Prince Town and Other Prince Town
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    ... and the town formerly known as ...

dillonmckay 7y ago

It seems to be the person has lived there at any point in their life? Southwest Florida is an interesting one...

brianbreslin 7y ago

Funny how a porn star is the #1 for Miami Beach. I would have expected some other kind of celebrity.

baddox 7y ago

It's too bad there are so many duplicates. I think it would be more interesting if it was based on birthplace, since big cities that attract lots of businesspeople/celebrities just get tagged with someone really famous who doesn't have any particular connection with the city (e.g. Elon Musk on Los Angeles, Steve Jobs on basically everywhere in the Bay Area). The Wikidata "place of birth" field would probably be a reasonably reliable source: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P19 https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P19

snazz 7y ago
Birthplace would be interesting, but there’s plenty of famous/important people who are connected to a location other than their birthplace. Think sports stars who were on a team far away from their home.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  Maybe, but it's still lame that Denver is represented by Peyton Manning. He was there a few years, but he isn't even the first person that the phrase "Denver quarterback" calls to mind.
  - jjuel 7y ago
    I mean that probably proves he is Wiki'ed much more than John Elway. Mostly a recency thing I would guess.
- baddox 7y ago
  Right, but I think that's a problem for large cities like Los Angeles. There's nothing particularly "Los Angeles" about Elon Musk that I know of, he's just really famous and (maybe?) happens to live there. And with birthplace, I think it's pretty interesting to browse the map for random tiny towns no one has heard of that happen to be the birthplaces of very famous people.
  - 0xffff2 7y ago

Bjorkbat 7y ago

I was kinda surprised by the Los Alamos result. I was expecting Oppenheimer, instead it was some guy named Drew Goddard.

maxander 7y ago

This is interesting in large part as a demonstration of how bizarre/indefinite the idea of being "from" a place is. For instance, Cambridge, MA isn't headlined by a famous MIT/Harvard academic, or local political figure, or even Neil Gaiman- but instead by Bhumibol Adulyadej, the previous king of Thailand, who was born there while his father was studying at Harvard, and left at the age of 2. Meanwhile, Boston gets John Cena, who was born in a far-out suburb.

mcguire 7y ago
That is strange; most places I checked were dominated by figures from popular culture. Huntsville, AL, for example...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
rhcom2 7y ago
No mention of Bruce Springsteen along the entire Jersey shore too.
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  He's attached to Bradley Beach. Oddly, his actual birthplace (Long Branch) went to Audrey Hepburn's first husband.
- moate 7y ago
  Jersey shore resident under the age of 100 here: Good! /s That said, it's very weird. he's listed on wikipedia as tagged with "People from..." several towns in Monmouth county. Max Weinberg takes one town, but several of the towns Bruce is listed with are taken over by relatively unknown people (Sorry Mel Ferrer and Charlie Puth)
umanwizard 7y ago
Another point is that in some parts of the country the concept of “city” breaks down. There is basically no meaningful difference between being from suburban neighborhoods of Glendale, AZ and nearby suburban neighborhoods of Phoenix. (People who are too young to be dealing with water bills, garbage collection, etc. often don’t even know which one they live in). Even the US Postal Service doesn’t necessarily respect local political boundaries. I grew up in Phoenix, close to the Glendale border, and my address said “Glendale, AZ”.

CWuestefeld 7y ago

Some surprising holes, of towns with famous people but aren't showing at all. For example * Jayson Williams, NBA player and murderer, Alexandria NJ * Malcolm Baldridge, US Secretary of Commerce, Woodbury CT Ninja edit: but I'm glad to see Dennis Ritchie in Summit, NJ

komali2 7y ago

Ah fuck, what a good idea and fun project this must have been. How do people come up with awesome ideas like this? Whenever I have time for a personal project it'll be like... "guess I'll uh.... make this LED on a raspberry pi blink... wheee"

pizza 7y ago
I would bet you probably come up with a really good idea about once a week, and that's being conservative. The trick is just to store them in some always-accessible note taking app (e.g. Evernote, OneNote, Apple's Notes app) as soon as they come to you (i.e. in the middle of a totally unrelated lecture), and accumulate them over a long period of time (talking years here).
- danielsf 7y ago
  OP here. This idea was from looking at this map. https://www.wearedorothy.com/collections/music/products/u-s-a-song-map-open-edition https://www.wearedorothy.com/collections/music/products/u-s-...
  - jen729w 7y ago
    It’s beautiful, and reminds me of an idea that I had ... hint ... hint. I live in Melbourne, Australia. Idle Googling led me to the discovery that someone had rated – as in on Maps, with stars – a tram stop. A municipal function, a concrete slab, a place you must necessarily and unavoidably go if you want a tram. Rated. People! Crazy. So I want a map that, at the level of ‘Melbourne’, aggregates the Google review for everything in view and gives the entire city a score. Then as I zoom in, eventually to the tram stop, I see the ratings of individual things. Ultimately I suppose you’d be able to zoom out to the world and see its Google review score.
    - onychomys 7y ago
      That would probably just end up being a map of economic conditions in any given section of town. The seedy parts will be lower rated overall (even if there's a highly rated ethnic food joint or whatever), while the swanky parts will have nicer things. That's my guess, although I think you should still do it, because I might be totally wrong. And interesting patterns might still appear even if I'm right.

billwear 7y ago

Well, you did miss Jimmy Wales, who grew up in Huntsville, AL, and attended Randolph School there. How did you select your data?

sampo 7y ago

> Data and Methods > Data for this story were collected and processed using the Wikipedia API. The period of collection was from July, 2015–May, 2019, from English Wikipedia. It was inspired in part by this map. > Person/city associations were based on the thousands of “People from X city” pages on Wikipedia. The top person from each city was determined by using median pageviews (with a minimum of 1 year of traffic). We chose to include multiple occurrences for a single person because there is both no way to determine which is more accurate and people can “be from” multiple places.

eesmith 7y ago
There is a flaw in their method. Take for example Santa Fe, New Mexico. I expected the most Wikipediaed person would be George R. R. Martin. Instead, it's Murray Gell-Mann. Odd. I mean, yes, famous physicist, coiner of 'quark', etc. But, c'mon, compared to George R. R. Martin? Then go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People_from_Santa_Fe,_New_Mexico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People_from_Santa_Fe,... . While Gell-Mann is on that page, there are also seven subcategories. - Actors from Santa Fe, New Mexico‎ (2 C, 16 P) - Archbishops of Santa Fe‎ (12 P) - Artists from Santa Fe, New Mexico‎ (78 P) - Musicians from Santa Fe, New Mexico‎ (16 P) - Politicians from Santa Fe, New Mexico‎ (1 C, 26 P) - Sportspeople from Santa Fe, New Mexico‎ (11 P) - Writers from Santa Fe, New Mexico‎ GRRM is in that last subcategory. However, it appears to be an uncommon pattern. I tried another 15 or so cities and none of them used subcategories.
- quacked 7y ago
  Well, Gell-Mann just died, so it could be one of those "whoever is in the news more recently gets the most pageviews" effects. Sort of like how any mildly funny post on a growing subreddit will become top/all time simply because a lot of people looked at it that day. The next day, there will be even more people to look at it, etc.
  - eesmith 7y ago
    "The period of collection was from July, 2015–May, 2019" and it seems unlikely that a one week bump due to Gell-Mann's recent death would be enough to change the balance. I don't know how to get page view statistics from the Wikipedia API to double-check this.

jlarocco 7y ago

Doesn't work for me in Firefox. If web developers aren't going to bother with cross-browser compatibility it'd be nice if they at least went back to telling visitors which browsers they do support.

Estyn 7y ago
Works for me in Firefox 67
howard941 7y ago
Me too. It likes FF 67.0 64 bit on win but dislikes FF 67.0 on 64 bit FreeBSD. The mapbox URLs aren't called on the latter. Are you also on a unix-like system?
- jlarocco 7y ago
  Yep, Debian. Other map sites work fine for me (caltopo.com, ridewithgps.com).
  - howard941 7y ago
    Yup same here, other mapping sites are just fine. Do you have a User-Agent masquerader add on available? I have no connectivity to my freebsd box at home now (no, thank you Frontier) or I'd try it and report back. But for the browser dependency it's a good looking site.
danmg 7y ago
worked for me on palemoon
rueynshard 7y ago
Works for me (FF on Ubuntu)
ascorbic 7y ago
Works for me with FF 68 on Mac

sampo 7y ago

I don't think Lynyrd Skynyrd from Jacksonville FL is a person.

gwbas1c 7y ago

How do I zoom?

danmg 7y ago
mouse wheel.
rconti 7y ago
double tap to zoom in on my trackpad. don't know how to zoom out.
- cristoperb 7y ago
  shift+double click zooms out for me.

clairity 7y ago

we sure do love our entertainers! a little interest makes sense but i've never understood the intense interest that most people have with entertainers and celebrities in general. i'm more interested in people who have, and can, impact my life, like historical figures, friends, family, scientists, and local/regional leaders (political or otherwise).

repstosw 7y ago

Good job, Oak Harbor, WA.

okmokmz 7y ago

I'm a bit disappointing that Mr Hands, the guy that died from getting penetrated by a horse, isn't the most Wikipedia'ed resident of Enumclaw Story for anyone interested https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enumclaw_horse_sex_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enumclaw_horse_sex_case

the_watcher 7y ago

This is really cool! Something that would be nice would be an option to toggle "born in/native" vs. "any association." My hometown, La Quinta, California, has Phil Knight simply because he has a home there. No one I know associates him with La Quinta.

pgt 7y ago

It would be cool to see the same map for people worldwide, not just in the US.

e40 7y ago

Muhammad Ali was born in Louisville, KY and not Paradise Valley (CA?). Wikipedia says this. Noticed this right off the bat.

Retra 7y ago
Birthplace isn't the criteria, residence is.

patorjk 7y ago

This got me to update Edward Norton's wikipedia entry. He's most likely the most famous person from Columbia, Maryland, he just wasn't categorized as from the town. Though it was interesting seeing Randy Pausch (computer scientist) listed as the town's rep.

dual_basis 7y ago

Really was expecting this to be an XKCD thing.

wharnal 7y ago

They've got an interesting definition of city... Seattle is all one city, but DC has Georgetown, Capitol Hill, and Dupont Circle in addition to a label for the entire city.

moate 7y ago
Go look at how far NYC gets broken down. Weird choices.
graywh 7y ago
It's based on what wikipedia pages exist. Several neighborhoods in my city are on this map, but nearby incorporated cites are not.

redleggedfrog 7y ago

Why isn't Linus used for Portland?! Steve Jobs. Pfft.

defen 7y ago
Torvalds or Pauling?
- redleggedfrog 7y ago
  Torvalds!

jonny_eh 7y ago

Why US only?

keiferski 7y ago

This is interesting as an example of how a person can be well-known yet their biographical details unknown. Andy Warhol is a good example. Almost everyone in America knows his name and yet (in my experience) almost no one knows that he grew up in Pittsburgh (outside of Pittsburgh, of course.)

sampleinajar 7y ago

Nitpick: Allen Iverson is from Hampton, Va. Hampton Roads is a name for the region that includes 5+ cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampton_Roads https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampton_Roads

ben010783 7y ago
The map seems like it doesn't specifically stick to municipalities. In New York City it gets granular enough to show that Sylvester Stallone was born in Hell's Kitchen. But for the city of Chicago, it only shows Barack Obama.

soperj 7y ago

Weird that they have Kurt Cobain in Montesano, not Aberdeen.

dlivingston 7y ago

Very cool, but...Murray Gell-Man for Santa Fe? Not George R.R. Martin? Drew Goddard for Los Alamos, not Richard Feynman?

jhbadger 7y ago
Besides the physics, Gell-Mann is known for the place that makes Santa Fe known to people who have no idea where it is -- the famous Santa Fe Institute.

deedubaya 7y ago

This was really cool to look at. This was really educational having grown up in a rural area where (I thought) no one of consequence came from. Thanks for sharing!

digikata 7y ago

I think it would be interesting if they filtered out any entertainment & sports celebrities to see who remained.

chrisg3 7y ago

This is very cool! Maybe you could add Puerto Rico as well.

leroy_masochist 7y ago

Danny DeVito upsets The Boss in Asbury Park! Did not see that one coming. Any other notable upsets?

serf 7y ago

question : why do WWE-related queries account for so much Wikipedia traffic?

pembrook 7y ago
Wrestling is massively massively popular...on a scale that most people in upper middle class bubbles do not realize.

kitotik 7y ago

Marilyn Monroe -> Compton was unexpected…

tompetry 7y ago

This is a super cool project. Spot checking WA state (where I was born and still live), the results are accurate and interesting! There are some comments about wanting to resolve duplicates (though duplicates are intentional), would be neat to include a "Born in this city" setting. I believe if the person was born in X city, they would show up in the "List of people from X" page - so not many changes needed. Bravo!

JshWright 7y ago

Ok, that was way more interesting than I expected... A few bits that are interesting to me (and probably no one else). The two towns I've lived in are both renamed Grover Cleveland (he was born in one, and spent most of his childhood in the other). Megyn Kelly attended elementary school in the next town over from where I live currently.

bryanrasmussen 7y ago

I think I'd go with largest Wikipedia article, probably in most cases the same.

lorenzorhoades 7y ago

Elon Musk has LA? hahahaha

Thorrez 7y ago

I wonder why James Earl Jones isn't listed for Jackson, MI. His page contains a link to Jackson, and Jackson's page contains a link to him. His page has more views than than Paula Faris'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Earl_Jones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Earl_Jones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson,_Michigan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson,_Michigan https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&start=2015-07&end=2019-04&pages=James_Earl_Jones|Paula_Faris https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/?project=en.wikipedia.or...

eesmith 7y ago
Because the creators of the map got their list of names from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People_from_Jackson,_Michigan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People_from_Jackson,_... . Paula Faris is in that list. James Earl Jones is not. Yes, there is overlap between that category page and the "Notable people" under https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson,_Michigan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson,_Michigan .

proy24 7y ago

aah I always knew Sarah Palin was famous for something...didn't know until now she is from Alaska.

ptah 7y ago

Interesting, it should be fun to extend this to the rest of the world

kitd 7y ago

Louisville, KY: Tom Cruise (born in Syracuse, NY, but parents born there) replaces Muhammed Ali (by far most famous native). Seems a bit unfair.

rotten 7y ago

The controls are terrible. I can't figure out how to zoom, and if I right click I get into some sort of "tilt" mode that can't be escaped from without reloading the page.

doktrin 7y ago

TIL Samuel L. Jackson is the most wikipedia'd person who's ever lived in Washington DC. That's kind of wild considering the competition includes every US president ever, among many others.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

garfieldnate 7y ago

No fair, Ted Bundy gets Tallahassee AND Salt Lake City?