A very simple shiny app I put together as a fun (?) way of helping choose
baby names.
The app can be run directly from GitHub:
shiny::runGitHub('cmhh/babynamebattle')Note that the app uses a SQLite database to store the names and results, so if you want to persist things you need to make a permanent local copy to run.
The app uses names from the U.S. Census as supplied by the hadley/babynames package.
There is a basic backend stored in data/battle.db. It consists of the
following tables:
roster- list of candidate namesbattles- record of all battlesscratched- list of names that have been permanently deleted
The roster is large and the app doesn't provide any useful mechanism for
removing names more than one-by-one. Bulk deletions can be applied by running
SQL queries against the backend--either by deleting rows from roster, or by
appending rows to scratched.
Names are chosen randomly with probability relative to popularity. Popularity is essentially the relative frequency of a name across time, but weighted towards more recent years (names from 1880 carry no weight, and names from 2014 carry full weight).