Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by DonHopkins 2345 days ago
Wow, how close did it guess your actual location?

Did you know you can enter your first name into Wolfram Alpha and it will guess your age, based on US birth statistics. So it's a shot in the dark with Dutch names.

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=kees&assumption=%7B%22...

A better example, it guesses "Gertrude" is probably 86 years old:

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=gertrude

1 comments

It's completely off, haha, since I emigrated. But my grandfather did indeed come from Scheveningen, which lies inside that one hotspot. There are basically a handful of last names that up to a few generations ago were as good as unique to that fishing village, and Van der Zwan is one of them. I try not to think too much about the genetic implications of that fact.

(now I wonder how you knew that "Kees" is a Dutch name)