100 Random Wikipedia Articles
While doing research a while back, I found myself clicking the link to look up a random Wikipedia article. Out of a combined sense of boredom and curiosity, I decided to see what would happen if I did it 100 times. My initial hypothesis was that the articles I would see the most of would be athletes and towns- assumptions that bore out pretty well, to be honest.
Some notes about how I handled difficult to categorize articles- Disambiguation pages presented the most obvious challenge, but I simplified that one fairly easily- I just counted the topmost linked article on the disambiguation page instead (with the exception of one disambiguation page for a surname, which I just placed under surname). In addition, the religion category proved tricky, since no two articles I got under there fit in the same subcategory- I got religious figures, specific churches, religious divisions… I grew frustrated there, and just jammed them all into Religious Topics. Most other categories worked out a bit better. Overall, there is a certain degree of inconsistency in the exactness of the categories, which is largely attributable to me doing this late at night while bored. I made a mediocre pie chart, too!
By descending number of articles:
Entertainment- 22
Band/ Musician- 4
Television Shows- 4
Films- 3
Actors/ Broadcasters- 2
Critics- 2
Radio Shows- 2
Broadcasting Channels- 1
Fashion Models- 1
Short Stories- 1
Songs- 1
Videogames- 1
Towns and Cities- 17
Athletics- 15
Athletes- 8
Specific Seasons/ Tournaments- 7
Biology- 9
Insects-3
Plants- 3
Extinct Species-2
Wealthy animals that inherited large amounts of money from their deceased owners- 1
Transportation- 8
Railroads-4
Bridges-1
Planes-1
Ships-1
Spacecraft/stations-1
Religious Topics- 6
Corporations- 4
Political Parties- 4
Regions or National Parks- 4
National Parks- 2
Regions- 2
Politicians- 3
Buildings- 2
Categories with only one article- 6
Adhesives- 1
British Schoolmasters-1
Fictional Characters-1
Letters of the alphabet- 1 (G)
Stars- 1
Surnames- 1
A version of this blog post was originally posted on my old blog.
This is very interesting. I'm sure the distribution would broaden even more with more clicks, but 100 is an impressive amount to spend time on for a blog post.
Maybe I'll go over and hit the random button a few times. You never know what I might learn! Thanks for sharing.
@originalworks
You'll probably learn about a cricket player or an administrative district in India, but you never know!
Just for fun, I went and tried it.
Ended up learning about Touchpaper, the 5th studio album by British singer Claire Hamill, which was released in 1984.
For even more fun, I searched the album on Amazon Prime Music and listened to the first track, entitled, The Moon is a Powerful Lover.
I do not recommend.
Lol! Too funny!
I shall take that under advisement. :D
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Of all the things to do for cheap entertainment! hahaha. Reminds me of when I had a cubicle job and when work was slow I'd start reading all sorts of wikipedia articles and make sure I was all caught up with the webcomic Order of the Stick.
I love Order of the Stick!
I haven't read it in ages. Another really good one I read was Goblins.
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great job @mountainwashere
@mountainwashere Well done for sticking at it! Love it. Followed..
Thanks!
This is great. I've never heard of this. I am going to try it out! I just did and got a lot of random stuff I've never heard of. Some racing team, some musician, some calculus, some coding language. :) Lol. Too funny. Going to have to recommend...or use it daily in our homeschool to learn about something new and exciting. ;)
Yeah, it's a lot of fun!