While doing research a while back, I found myself clicking the link to look up a random Wikipedia article. Out of a combined sense of boredom and curiosity, I decided to see what would happen if I did it 100 times. My initial hypothesis was that the articles I would see the most of would be athletes and towns- assumptions that bore out pretty well, to be honest.
Some notes about how I handled difficult to categorize articles- Disambiguation pages presented the most obvious challenge, but I simplified that one fairly easily- I just counted the topmost linked article on the disambiguation page instead (with the exception of one disambiguation page for a surname, which I just placed under surname). In addition, the religion category proved tricky, since no two articles I got under there fit in the same subcategory- I got religious figures, specific churches, religious divisions… I grew frustrated there, and just jammed them all into Religious Topics. Most other categories worked out a bit better. Overall, there is a certain degree of inconsistency in the exactness of the categories, which is largely attributable to me doing this late at night while bored. I made a mediocre pie chart, too!
By descending number of articles:
Entertainment- 22
Band/ Musician- 4
Television Shows- 4
Films- 3
Actors/ Broadcasters- 2
Critics- 2
Radio Shows- 2
Broadcasting Channels- 1
Fashion Models- 1
Short Stories- 1
Songs- 1
Videogames- 1
Towns and Cities- 17
Athletics- 15
Athletes- 8
Specific Seasons/ Tournaments- 7
Biology- 9
Insects-3
Plants- 3
Extinct Species-2
Wealthy animals that inherited large amounts of money from their deceased owners- 1
Transportation- 8
Railroads-4
Bridges-1
Planes-1
Ships-1
Spacecraft/stations-1
Religious Topics- 6
Corporations- 4
Political Parties- 4
Regions or National Parks- 4
National Parks- 2
Regions- 2
Politicians- 3
Buildings- 2
Categories with only one article- 6
Adhesives- 1
British Schoolmasters-1
Fictional Characters-1
Letters of the alphabet- 1 (G)
Stars- 1
Surnames- 1
A version of this blog post was originally posted on my old blog.