Have you taken the U.S. dialect quiz, the one published by the New York Times a couple weeks ago? It was the buzz of many holiday gatherings, impressing people with its ability to predict where they’re from based on the words they use.
This week on the GeekWire radio show, we get the inside story of the research that provided the foundation for the quiz. Our guest is Scott Golder, a data scientist at Context Relevant in Seattle who worked on the Harvard Dialect Project as an undergrad a decade ago with professor Bert Vaux.
Golder tells us about the original efforts to collect the data, and shares his thoughts on the project resurfacing through the New York Times feature. And he explains how this demonstrates the ability of data to shed new light on ourselves and the world around us.
Listen to the show via the audio player below or this MP3 file. The conversation with Golder begins in the second segment, starting at 6:45. Also see John’s story about Golder from earlier this week.
In the first segment, we give a rundown of the top tech stocks from the Seattle region from 2013. (Can you guess which one performed the best?)
We also preview the big event ahead — the annual CES tech megashow in Las Vegas, where I’m headed with our colleague Taylor Soper to cover the news.
Name that Tech Tune: Here is this week’s tune. Do you know what that is? Send your answer to contest@geekwire.com. From the pool of correct answers, we’ll pick one person at random to win Robot Turtles, “The Board Game For Little Programmers,” courtesy of the game’s creator, Seattle entrepreneur Dan Shapiro.
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