Alright, so I wanted to mess around with a list of jockey names. It all started because I was watching some horse racing replays and kept hearing these unique names. I got curious about how many there were and if there were any patterns, you know, like common last names or something.
First, I needed to actually get a list. So, I fired up my browser and did some searching. I tried a few different phrases, and eventually, I found a couple of websites that seemed to have pretty comprehensive lists.
Collecting the Data
Initially, I thought about copying and pasting the names manually. But, man, that would have taken forever! There were hundreds, maybe even thousands, of names.
- So, I decided to try and scrape the data. I am not a coder, so this took me a while.
- I went through a lot of trial and error until I got all the names in one place.
Cleaning It Up
Once I had the data, I needed to “clean” them. To do this, I dumped the list I created into a spreadsheet. I had plenty of problems:
- Some of the names were formatted weirdly, like with extra spaces or titles.
- There were some duplicates.
- I needed to get rid of the extra spaces, and the duplicates.
After I went through all the names manually, I finally had a clean list.
Then, after I had my nice, clean list, I started playing around with it. I used the sort functions to see the most common last names and what letters the names started and ended with. It was pretty interesting!
So yeah, that’s pretty much it. Just a simple project, playing around with a list of jockey names. It started with curiosity and ended with a bit of spreadsheet fun.
