Data about bird names!
This is the repository for a series of empirical explorations by MKS and BKS about birds and what they are called.
Survey conducted during MKS + BKS joint birthday party; some responses collected over subsequent weeks.
45 birds selected by conducting an informal grouping/clustering process on the core set of Wingspan cards. For each of the resulting ~30 groups, we selected one or two species as most representative examples, aiming to balance bird diversity and 'knowability' (we a primarily interested in people's names for/knowledge of common birds). To this list, we added the following super common species which are not in the WS deck, since they are technically non-native to the United States:
- Rock Pigeon
- European Starling
- Domestic Chicken
For each bird, we then selected the first photo on that species' Cornell Lab of Ornithology page.
Survey administered on paper (B&W with color reference photos displayed nearby), with open-response line for each bird. The instructions were: "without consulting other people, give your best guess for the name of every bird on the sheet. Even if you know it's not really the bird's name, put down what you would call it."
Survey available here.
bird_data.tsv: Data entered by MKS, spelling corrections & simplification of correct answers only (e.g. "Mallard, maybe" --> "Mallard")
Two lines of short/long correct answers is also added, make sure not to include in the data analysis!
bird_data.Rmd: R script used to analyze the raw data! See that file for descriptions of specific analyses.
Google sheet used to select especially good ideas people had for names of birds.
Next up, run a prolific study maybe?