Data and Methods

Data for this story is collected daily using the Wikipedia API (English only). The yearly aggregation of notable births (e.g., 1950) was the starting point to decide who is considered a celebrity or not (a foundation of over 40,000 people). The full source is available on Github.

Occupations are assigned based on the first match in the person’s description (e.g., if the description is “basketball player, actor” they are listed “sports”).