MINI RESEARCH PROJECT: Smith vs Nguyen

[John President]

OK, so I clearly have too much time on my hands...

I went to the VTAC results page on the Herald Sun site and searched by course, getting a list of all the people who will be in UoM Science with me this year. First I CTRL+F 'd my postcode to see who else in my suburb was doing the same course, just for interests sake. Then for some reason I decided to try to work out what the most common surname was in the massive list.

The first interesting thing I found was the Smith to Nguyen ratio - 3 Smiths and 23 Nguyens in Science at UoM.

Now, I know that the name Nguyen is extremely common in Vietnam and also is one of the most common names in Australia now, but I nonetheless was astonished at the stark differential, especially considering that there are about 20 full pages of Smiths or something in the White Pages.

If any of you Nguyens or Smiths are reading this - I congratulate you on getting into your course, but for the Nguyens in particular -

But I'm meandering from the point here - then I decided to do the same thing for Arts at UoM, and then a few other courses at UniMelb. I restricted myself to UniMelb partly because their new generation degrees meant that a lotHere are my results:

COURSE NGUYENS SMITHS
Science 23 - 3
Arts 5 - 9
Biomed 5 - 1
Commerce 8 - 0
Environments 1 - 1
Total 42 - 14
Minus Arts 37 - 5 
Ratio 3:1 (3 Nguyens for every Smith)

So, based on the results of this silly and totally unnecessary project, I would like to draw this equally silly conclusion as the Asian stereotype one is cliched and rather obvious (if not altogether irrelevant)

The entire Smith family must have had a massive party on the eve of the English exam last year, with the resultant throbbing hangovers completely ruining their exam performance the next day. This caused their ATARs to be significantly lower, resulting in many of them who aimed to get into UniMelb failing. The ones aiming to do Arts were literate enough to avoid any significant effects brought about by the after-effects of the party. Also, many of them did Lit and not English, completely avoiding this downfall.

Thank you for reading my absurd post.

[Stroodle]

Wow, there's a lot of Smiths doing Arts hey.

I was actually looking at the most common surnames in biomed and, if I remember correctly, Wang and Tran tied for equal first.

I don't think Smith is as common as it's made out to be.

[taiga]

I love the OP for doing this.

[John President]

Makes me glad that I don't have a really common surname - and no, don't bother searching "President"   

Still, I'm absolutely flabbergasted that there isn't a single Smith in commerce.

Oh and Stroodle - for the record:

COURSE TRAN WANG
Science 16 - 5
Arts 2 - 1

[Stroodle]

Yeah, same. There was only one other person that got an offer from vtac who had the same surname as me

Wang's don't like Arts hey.

I actually find these stats really fascinating 

[Ghost!]

I actually find these stats really fascinating  Smiley

Likewise :3

[m@tty]

Yeah, same. There was only one other person that got an offer from vtac who had the same surname as me

Wang's don't like Arts hey.

I was the only one for my name

And I would've thought all the wangs would be in Arts? (not the surname wang )

[dyaner]

This is interesting.
I would be hoping to meet the other 22 Nguyens in my course

[Duck]

I know a smith in Monash commerce.

[Predator]

I guess Nguyen is the most common Vietnamese surname so it allows for a higher percentage to get into UoM.
However interesting statitics and good researching skills that should have you in high stead for your science course which of course uses research methods and ideas