I had some questions about the NameGrapher and Laura answered them:

AG: Are the data given both by year of Social Security Number registration and year of birth? Also why is your data only by decade before the 2000? I recall the Social Security Administration data being every year?

LW: The SSA data are by date of birth only, and has the limitation that early decades are less complete and reliable, and skewed female due to survivorship (and possibly by willingness to register for a SSN later in life). Going decade by decade does cost detail, but it has several advantages: faster rendering for responsive animation, smoother curves, and helping to offset the choppiness of the early data years.

AG: I think the x-axis needs to be fixed in that the decade numbers don’t quite line up with the axis. The data for 2010 onward are yearly; before 2010 they’re by decade. But then I think the data for the decades 2000-2010, 1990-2000, etc., should be plotted at 2005, 1995, etc. As it is, the point for each decade is displayed to the left of the decade marker, thus visually assigning 2000-2010, 1990-2000, etc., to the years 2000, 2010, etc.

LW: We’ve actually been going back and forth on the x-axis labeling, it’s a problem. The trick is that the most recent decade is actually year-by-year data to allow a closer look at current trends, so moving the labels to the midpoint of decades ends up with a traffic jam in the 2000s.

AG: I’m not colorblind so I can’t say, but this green and orange palate . . . does it work for everyone? I have no idea.

LW: We did test the colors in a color-blindness simulator and they seemed acceptable.

So there you have it!

P.S. They’re naming kids Judas nowadays.