{"id":19295,"date":"2019-04-18T14:52:37","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T18:52:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=19295"},"modified":"2022-08-01T07:42:51","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T11:42:51","slug":"the-name-of-our-next-president-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2019\/04\/the-name-of-our-next-president-is\/","title":{"rendered":"The Name of Our Next President Is…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Asked & Answered 6.0<\/strong><\/em><\/h4>\n

Blame it on a simple twist of Hickenlooper fate.<\/p>\n

I confess: it is only because former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper decided to run for president that I decided to write this post.\u00a0 His candidacy intrigues me — if Hickenlooper were to win, he would would join Dwight Eisenhower as our only four-syllable presidents and he would be the first president with a 12-letter surname.<\/p>\n

Hickenlooper himself talks about his “funny name” but how unusual is it, relative to other U.S. Presidents?\u00a0 How does it affect his chances?\u00a0 What is a presidential name, anyway? Since no one is addressing these important questions, I am happy to do so — not only for Hickenlooper’s sake but for all of the 2020 presidential candidates.<\/p>\n

Here is how we will proceed.\u00a0 First, we will assign weights to the names of our presidents based on their positive or negative influence.\u00a0 We will then use those weights to tabulate the desirability of three properties of presidential names — length, consonant-vowel ratio and last letter.\u00a0 Finally, we will calculate a Sounds Like A President<\/em> (SLAP) score for each candidate’s name based on its properties and their historical desirability.<\/p>\n

\u2022 \u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0<\/p>\n

Let’s preface the discussion by comparing the length of the surnames of U.S. presidents to those of the population at large.\u00a0 The chart below shows the prevalence of last names of various lengths for both groups.[1]<\/sup>\u00a0 Note how the presidents with 8 to 10 letters in their last names are over-represented with respect to the population:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>We should not conclude from this chart that long names confer an electoral advantage.\u00a0 Perhaps the performance of those presidents was so poor that a longer name now carries a negative connotation.\u00a0 Or it could be that no one even remembers certain presidents and therefore the characteristics of their names are irrelevant.\u00a0 This is why we must begin the analysis by calculating Presidential Name Weights <\/em>(PNW):<\/p>\n

PNW (for President x<\/em>) = Reputation Score<\/em>\u00a0 x<\/span>\u00a0 Memorability Factor
\n <\/em><\/p>\n

Using Presidential Name Weights<\/em> (ranging from -1.0 to 1.0) is more realistic than giving equal weight to each name without regard to how or whether a president is remembered.<\/p>\n

The Reputation Score<\/em> of each president is derived from the 2019 Survey of U.S. Presidents<\/a> conducted by Siena College Research Institute.[2]<\/sup>\u00a0 In this survey, 157 presidential scholars and historians rated the presidents on their abilities and accomplishments, and the results were ranked from 1 (best) to 44 (worst).\u00a0 I re-scaled the rankings so that Reputation Score<\/em> ranges from 1.0 (best) to -1.0 (worst) and 0.0 represents an average (mediocre) president.<\/p>\n

The Memorability Factor<\/em> for each president comes from a study by Roediger and Desoto<\/a>, in which participants were asked to name as many presidents as they could remember.\u00a0 This factor ranges from 0.0 to 1.0, reflecting the fraction of participants who were able to name a given president.[3]<\/sup><\/p>\n

We can now calculate the Presidential Name Weight for each president as the product of his reputation and his memorability.\u00a0 The results (below) are sorted from most positive to most negative:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This chart tells us that the names Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, Roosevelt<\/em> and Kennedy<\/em> carry the most positive weights, whereas Nixon, Hoover, Johnson, Bush<\/em> and Trump<\/em> suffer the most negative weights.\u00a0 Candidates whose names remind us of Washington or Lincoln would score highly relative to candidates with names like Bush and Trump.<\/p>\n

\u2022 \u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0<\/p>\n

Our next step is to construct a Desirability Table<\/em> for each property of a presidential name.\u00a0 For instance, how desirable is having 9 letters in one’s last name?\u00a0 How desirable is having a name that ends in n<\/em>?\u00a0 And so on.<\/p>\n

This example shows how a Desirability Table is built.\u00a0 Say we want to know the desirability of having a surname with x<\/em> letters.\u00a0 1) We list all the presidents with x-<\/em>letter surnames and add up their Presidential Name Weights.\u00a0 2) We divide that sum by the total PNW for all presidents to yield the desirability factor D<\/em> for an x-<\/em>letter surname.\u00a0 Repeat these steps for every possible value of x<\/em> to complete the Letter Count Desirability Table.\u00a0 And so on.<\/p>\n

Here then are the Desirability Tables for the presidential name properties in our analysis.\u00a0 Each D<\/em>-factor is a value between -1.0 and 1.0, and the highest D-<\/em>factor for each property is shown in green.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The tables reveal that the highest-scoring presidential name would be 9 letters long, have a consonant-to-vowel ratio between 2.1 and 2.6, and end in the letter n<\/em>.\u00a0 Interestingly, none of our presidents’ names have all three of these features.[4]<\/sup><\/p>\n

The last item we need to address before calculating Sounds Like A President<\/em> (SLAP) scores for the candidates is the weight we should assign to each property.\u00a0 Here, we will elect to base a property’s weight on the amount of variation in its D<\/em>-factors.[5]<\/sup>\u00a0 Sparing the reader my lengthy justification, the weights we will assign to letter count, consonant-vowel ratio and last letter are w<\/em>(LC) = 0.265, w<\/em>(CV) = 0.275 and w<\/em>(LL) = 0.460 respectively.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2022 \u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0<\/p>\n

We are finally ready to calculate the SLAP score for each candidate, using this formula:<\/p>\n

SLAP (for candidate x<\/em>) = w<\/em>(LC) x<\/span> D<\/em>(LC)\u00a0 +\u00a0 w<\/em>(CV) x <\/span>D<\/em>(CV)\u00a0 +\u00a0 w<\/em>(LL) x <\/span>D<\/em>(LL)<\/p>\n

For illustration, let’s consider John Hickenlooper.\u00a0 Hickenlooper’s last name has 12 letters, a consonant-vowel ratio of 1.4 and ends in r<\/em>, so his SLAP score is<\/p>\n

SLAP (Hickenlooper) = (0.265 x <\/span>0) + (0.275 x<\/span> 0.463) + (0.460 x<\/span> -0.038) = 0.110<\/p>\n

which means he does not have a very presidential name, indeed.<\/p>\n

The highest possible SLAP score is 0.657, corresponding to a name which has 9 letters and 5 consonants and ends in n<\/em>.\u00a0 Sen. Dianne Feinstein, destiny awaits you.<\/p>\n

\u2022 \u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n

The table below lists the SLAP scores for the 20 mainstream presidential candidates (plus Donald Trump).\u00a0 And the name of our next president is…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Elizabeth Warren!\u00a0 Warren vaults to the top of the list on the strength of her last letter\u00a0n<\/em> and consonant-vowel ratio of 2.0.\u00a0 Warren edges out Joe Biden, whose five-letter name weighs him down, thanks to the likes of Trump, Nixon, Tyler, Hayes and Grant.<\/p>\n

Tim Ryan of Ohio has a decent SLAP score and may be a good running mate for Warren. Bernie Sanders has another respectable showing but comes up short in the last letter race. Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg (his full name) is just happy his last name is not Burns.<\/span><\/p>\n

If only Hillary Clinton were running… her Sounds Like A President<\/em> score would be 0.637.<\/p>\n

Last and least is where we find Donald Trump.\u00a0 Memorably poor performance.\u00a0 Negative scores in all areas.\u00a0 Still doesn’t sound like a president.<\/p>\n

___________________<\/p>\n

[1] Data for the U.S. population is from the 2010 U.S. Census<\/a>, comprising the most-common 150,000 names representing 90% of the population.<\/span><\/p>\n

[2] As one might expect, George Washington topped the rankings and Andrew Johnson came in dead last.\u00a0 Donald Trump was merely the third-worst.<\/span><\/p>\n

[3] The Roediger and Desoto study was published in 2014, prior to the 2016 election.\u00a0 As such, the president named most often was Barack Obama (100%).\u00a0 I assigned Donald Trump a 100% memorability factor as well but did not adjust the figures for the other presidents.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

[4] Readers may ask, why these properties and not others, such as the number of syllables?\u00a0 Syllable count would be fairly redundant, as it is correlated with letter count and consonant-to-vowel ratio.\u00a0 I tried to select properties that appeared to be more-or-less independent but I did not actually test their cross-correlation.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

[5] Specifically, the property weights w<\/em> are based on the standard deviation in D<\/em>(property).\u00a0 My rationale is that a factor with little variation does not differentiate the candidates as much as one with large variation.\u00a0 The statisticians among my readers are sure to howl, which is OK, because I don’t know any statisticians.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Asked & Answered 6.0 Blame it on a simple twist of Hickenlooper fate. I confess: it is only because former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper decided to run for president that I decided to write this post.\u00a0 His candidacy intrigues me … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asked-and-answered"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19295"}],"version-history":[{"count":85,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19395,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19295\/revisions\/19395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}