Ooh, this is an interesting thread; I’ve never really thought about my favourite coaster for each letter of the alphabet before, but I’ll give it a go!
- A: Arthur - Europa Park (#31/111)
- B: Blue Fire - Europa Park (#16/111)
- C: CanCan Coaster - Europa Park (#21/111)
- D: Dragon Challenge Hungarian Horntail - Islands of Adventure (#48/111)
- E: Expedition Everest - Disney’s Animal Kingdom (#46/111)
- F: Flight of the Pterosaur - Paultons Park (#37/111)
- G: Galactica - Alton Towers (#65/111)
- H: Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure - Islands of Adventure (#4/111)
- I: Iron Gwazi - Busch Gardens Tampa (#5/111)
- J: Jurassic World VelociCoaster - Islands of Adventure (#2/111)
- K: Kumba - Busch Gardens Tampa (#23/111)
- L: I haven’t been on a coaster beginning with L…
- M: Mako - SeaWorld Orlando (#1/111)
- N: Nemesis Inferno - Thorpe Park (#17/111)
- O: Oblivion - Alton Towers (#11/111)
- P: Pegasus - Europa Park (#32/111)
- Q: I haven’t been on a coaster beginning with Q…
- R: Revenge of the Mummy - Universal Studios Florida (#14/111)
- S: Silver Star - Europa Park (#3/111)
- T: Thirteen - Alton Towers (#28/111)
- U: I haven’t been on a coaster beginning with U…
- V: Vampire - Chessington World of Adventures (#50/111)
- W: Wodan - Europa Park (#6/111)
- X: I haven’t been on a coaster beginning with X…
- Y: I haven’t been on a coaster beginning with Y…
- Z: I haven’t been on a coaster beginning with Z…
So I have done coasters with names spanning
20 letters of the alphabet, as it turns out! I am currently missing an L, a Q, a U, an X, a Y, and a Z from my count.
I also fancied doing a bit of completely useless data analysis on this topic...
Firstly, I decided to work out my most commonly ridden first name letters.
Here is a pie chart of my most commonly ridden first name letters:
As shown, my top 3 most common letters are:
Ranking | Letter | Number of Coasters | Proportion of Count (to nearest whole number) |
1 | S | 19 | 17% |
2 | M | 10 | 9% |
3 | C | 9 | 8% |
Then, I decided to work out my highest-ranking first name letters on average.
Here is a boxplot of my letters by ranking (I apologise for the fact that they're out of alphabetical order... the boxplot is listed in the order in which the letters first appear within my rankings rather than alphabetical order):
My top 3 highest ranking letters on average (using mean) are as follows:
Ranking | Letter | Mean Ranking out of 111 (to 1dp) | Number of Coasters |
1 | N | 29.3 | 3 |
2 | K | 30.3 | 3 |
3 | W | 34.7 | 3 |
Finally, I decided to test whether there is any relationship between the frequency with which a letter appears within my count and its mean ranking.
Here is a scatter graph showing the distribution of frequency of letter against mean ranking of letter:
And here are the Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficients between frequency of letter and mean ranking of letter:
The magnitude of a correlation coefficient ranges between 0 and 1, with 0 indicating no relationship and 1 indicating a perfect causal relationship. Based on that, I think we can conclude that there isn't really a statistically significant relationship between how often a letter appears and how highly it ranks on average; as the typical threshold I use for a weak, but statistically notable, correlation is 0.25, even the Spearman coefficient of -0.12 does not indicate a causal relationship of note...