Playing Cards

So I spend a little time playing with these data, in which people were asked to name their favorite playing card. You know, cards, as in (the most popular, it turns out) Ace of Spades. What does this have to do with what people know? About the media, or politics? Not a damn thing. It's my blog, dammit. I can write about what I want to write about, so strap in and go for a playing card ride because there's some interesting stuff here.

The first question is obvious -- what card to people name most often? As I mentioned above, and to no real surprise, it's the Ace of Spades. I excluded from analysis all the "no answer" responses because, face it, they're boring people.  Below is the Top 5 with the percent of all responders who chose that particular card:

1. Ace of Spades (20.1%)
2. Queen of Hearts (11.3%)
3. Ace of Hearts (8.3%)
4. King of Hearts (4.9%)
5. Jack of Spades (3.1%)

So people trend toward the aces and face cards. No surprise. In fact you have to go all the way to #6 to see a different card, the 3 of Diamonds, which for life of me I can't figure out why anyone would name, but 2.6 percent of respondents chose it first. It's fascinating (okay, to me) that after the Ace of Spades people are all over the Hearts cards. 

I promised you something interesting, so here it is. There's a gender difference. Yes, the Ace of Spades is the one most named by both male and female respondents, but the #2 slot gets interesting. For men, 15.0 percent of the time it was the Queen of Hearts. For women, the #2 slot is more spread out but winning by a hair is the King of Hearts (6.6 percent), followed by a tie between the Queen of Hearts and Age of Hearts (6.6 percent). What can we make of this? Men gravitate to the Queen of Hearts, women to the King of Hearts. I'm sure with some effort I can deliver a Freudian interpretation of the results, but I'll let you figure it out.  Men do name more power cards in their Top 10 while women slip the 3 of Diamonds into their fifth highest position. Fascinating. What's up with that card? Anyone?

By the way, the least named cards were a tie between 9 of Spades and 9 of Clubs (only a couple of people for each, or 1.8 percent).