My letter to the New Yorker

Dear Editors,

Ian Frazier (“Snook,” October 30th) writes, “you will find suprisingly often that people take up professions suggested by their last names.” In an article called “Why Susie sells seashells by the seashore: implicit egotism and major life decisions,” Brett Pelham, Matthew Mirenberg, and John Jones found some striking patterns. Just for example, there were 482 dentists in the United States named Dennis, as compared to only 260 that would be expected simply from the frequencies of Dennises and dentists in the population. On the other hand, the 222 “extra” Dennis dentists are only a very small fraction of the 620,000 Dennises in the country; this name pattern thus is striking but represents a small total effect. Some quick calculations suggest that approximately 1% of Americans’ career choices are influenced by the sound of their first name.

Yours
Andrew Gelman

[not in the email] Here’s the relevant link.