
Originally Posted by
www.popvssoda.com:
ABSTRACT
Using the World Wide Web to gather and process data from across English-speaking North America, I intend to plot the regional variations in the use of the terms "Pop" and "Soda" to describe carbonated soft drinks.
RESEARCH
The primary source of data for this study will be submissions from readers of this web page. Obviously, this may not be a completely random sampling, but since the primary objective of the study is to map the regional distribution and not the population distribution per response, this sample should suffice. Also, since a large percentage of internet users are college students who may use dialects not local to their current place of residence, this survey asks for the respondent's "home town" and the beverage-term used by most of the population there. This data will be imperfect at best, but should be the most accurate possible without actually going into the field, and certainly the most comprehensive study of the field to date.
This research uses CGI scripts written in Perl to gather and process the incoming data, and displays the results on the map above using a Java applet.
CONCLUSION
People who say "Pop" are much, much cooler