User:Jarry1250/Findings

Below are the findings from my recent disambiguation analysis. There were no real surprises, but a few conclusions did stand out for me.

Conclusions

• Between January 2007 and May 2009, the number of articles increased 64%; the number with "(disambiguation)" in their names increased 66%, suggesting the total amount of disambiguation needs has increased in line with the total number of articles.
• United States-related terminology was common: "United States" the most common country to appear; and individual state names turned up more than the second country in the list, the United Kingdom. The trend, however, has been to remove state names from brackets-defined disambiguation; in January 2007, 7 different states were more common than "United States" and one state (Missouri) was more commonly found than all the 50 states put together today.
• Music-related terminology was the most common theme: three of the top four terms were related. These accounted for just under a sixth of the whole population, and just under a fifth of terms used more than once (53,789).
• The need to disambiguate between people was clear: a profession was a component of a sixth of the sample, though the profession-born-year notation was surprisingly uncommon, considering the number of times it causes controversy (only 1437 times in the entire population).
• Since January 2007, the following other shifts in usage have occured:
  • movie has successfully been amalgamated into the term film;
  • both game and computer game have fallen out of usage, many instances becoming video game;
  • football player has become footballer;
  • every use of constituency (there were 565) now defines of what it is a constituency;
  • many use of single have been phased out in favour of other alternatives such as song, or the more specific EP;
  • MO, a contraction, has been deprecated;
  • television has been replaced by more specific alternatives;
  • the names of sports such as ice hockey and American football have been some of the biggest gainers.

Tabulated data

Top 50

Name of article	Number in sample	Total	Change
disambiguation	5995	26803	+66%
album	2979	13206	+83%
film	1952	9022	+83%
song	1415	6369	+56%
band	1459	6006	+54%
footballer	1024	4145	+149%
novel	666	3295	+108%
comics	684	2928	+28% or less
TV series	608	2926	+100%
politician	542	2482	+105%
musician	533	2133	+77%
actor	495	2092	+95%
American football	563	2045	+405% or less
UK Parliament constituency	442	1917	+30%
baseball	471	1893	+402%
video game	459	1743	+88%
surname	456	1703	+316%
crater	411	1599	+100%
cricketer	351	1517	+185%
United States or US or USA	676	1282	+175% or less
magazine	287	1175	+66%
ice hockey	300	1067	+312% or more
book	204	962	-1%
singer	246	942	+60%
EP	183	878	+239% or more
basketball	260	850	+141%
writer	182	839	+101%
author	195	828	+120%
artist	187	819	+107%
play	181	801	+84%
United Kingdom or UK	300	754	+62% or less
name	186	740	+186% or more
horse	198	708	+160%
athlete	151	673	+152%
electoral district	160	652	+65%
journalist	156	627	+142% or more
Australia	197	577	+123% or more
Lok Sabha constituency	175	576	+122% or more
district	127	562	-11%
electoral district	124	560	+116% or more
company	152	546	+83%
genus	167	519	+100% or more
moth	153	489	+89% or more
tennis	350	487	+88% or more
game	123	431	-53%
mythology	127	423	-1%
Germany	230	403	+56% or more
soccer	115	394	+52% or more
music	105	391	-34%
number	341	346	+30%

The above list is imperfect, and some entries towards the lower end of the table may be missing, due to errors carried forward with the sampling.

Special groupings

Rule	Details	Count
Total	The number of articles with brackets in their names. (Sample size)	65535
Unique terms	Different disambiguators	16349
Used terms	Unique terms used more than once	4603
A profession	Ends with or/er/ist/ian/coach/man/ishop/ess (e.g. "American footballer").	11480
Profession born year	A profession born year.	329
Inc. profession	Either profession or profession born year.	11809
Year	Solely a four-digit number beginning with a 1 or 2.	977
Year film	Year film (e.g. "1987 film").	1186
Year something	Year [...].	1572
Decade something	1 or 2, digit, digit, 0s [...].	53
Only common nouns	Solely the word 'album', 'film', 'play' or 'song'.	6527
Inc. common nouns	Including the word 'album', 'film', 'play' or 'song'.	11551
Only state name	Literally the name of a U.S. state (e.g. "New Mexico").	1362
Referencing states	Names referring to a U.S. state in some way (e.g. "New Mexican politician", "New Mexico").	3517
Only country name	Literally the name of a country. Includes constituent states of the United Kingdom.	3232
Inc. country name	Names including the name of a country (e.g. "Russia", "Russian politician"). Includes constituent states of the United Kingdom.	4411
Country demonyms	Names including the demonym for a country (e.g. "Italian", "German Empire"). Includes constituent states of the United Kingdom.	2563
Episode	[Name] episode (e.g. "CSI episode", "episode").	217
Electoral	Includes the words 'constituency' or 'district'.	1361
~ogy	Includes the string 'ogy'	413
Biological	Includes the word 'genus', 'species' or 'phylum' (e.g. "Moth genus", "species")	179
Game	Includes the string 'game'	974
Station	Includes the string 'station'	654
Name	Includes the string 'name'	782
Sport name	Ends with the name of a sport (e.g. "Ice Hockey", "Soccer")	2460
US football	The name of a US Football position (e.g. "Center")	95
Musical	Music related (e.g. "New Order single", "rapper")	10776

n.b. All counts in the table above are from the sample, not the full population.