Percival Bresler’s Got Neural Gas
Alex BreslerOn or about July 3rd 2017, give or take a few weeks I will join the ranks of fatherhood when little baby Bresler enters this earth.
As I outlined in some detail a few weeks back I decided to see if topological data analysis could help me come up with baby names. It worked better than I ever could have imagined and now with the release of the 2016 baby name data from the Social Security Administration I decided to update the grouping results and formally release my interactive application that lets you explore baby name suggestions with the help of Growing Neural Gas and Kohonen/Self Organizing Map algorithms.
All you need to do is enter in a name you like, don’t like, or are curious about, define the distance, parent algorithm, grouping variables and press the button. The perfect name could be just one click away!
Application
Full Screen Version
A full screen version of the application is available here.
Coming Soon
Around the time little Bresler joins us I intend to release a new r package I built that includes these topological algorithms and all the other tools I used during the baby name exploration process, the package is called babynameR, stay tuned for it!