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ESC!Webs Site of the Week Week of September 17, 2000 The Pop vs. Soda Page Maintained by: almccon@ugcs.caltech.edu Main Web Site: http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~almccon/pop_soda/ When you ask a friend if they would like a cold refreshing beverage from the refrigerator what you you ask? Would they like a soda or would they like a pop? (Don't say beer! That counts, but not for this article -- okay?) Ah the wonderful evolution of the English language! You may be surprised to see just how divided this nation is when it comes to the word used to describe everyone's favorite soft drinks. In the words of the site's creator:
What You'll Find The first thing you'll notice on the site is a map of the United States covered in blue, green, red and purple spots. That's a live reading of the current survey results. The first thing that struck me about the map was the incredible number of people in my area of the country who say 'pop'. Personally I say 'soda'. I wasn't sure after reading the site because, when it boils right down to it, I don't have a strong opinion on it either way, but I was conscious of my words the next few days and even asked Janet to verify this for me. (To her credit, Janet simply wrote this off as another one of my weird questions, but I digress.) Anyway, the blue and green spots represent the two most common ways of referring to soft drinks -- pop and soda. The purple represents local variations like soda-pop and phosphate. Lastly, the red represents Coke. That surprised me. There really isn't any massive push towards calling a soft drink Pepsi -- so why Coke? Well, the nice thing about the map is that it makes it very clear that this regional way of referring to a cola originates in Atlanta (the home of Coca Cola) and radiates out from there. The only other section of note to the site is the "other" page. It is here that you can read all of the responses from survey takers who did not refer to their soft drinks as soda, pop or Coke. It is very clearly broken down by country and state making it easy to navigate to the area you want to see more statistics for. I spent quite a lot of time browsing the states where "other" votes were concentrated and this is where I learned that Easterners in the US still commonly drink a phosphate! Cool! Scientific Methods The site very clearly states that it's methods aren't overly scientific, but it does tally every vote which comes in no matter how outlandish the write in might be. So, based on the spread of responses over the map and the originality of responses, I would have to say that his methods seem very sound. Where else in the world can you get a truly random sampling of people to answer a serious and scientific survey but on the Internet? I encourage you to read the whole home page to learn more about the methods behind this site. Overall, this site is not one to visit every day, but the occasional visit can yield interesting results especially as word gets out about it's existence. I voted (be sure to put in your zip code when you do) and you don't need an exit poll any more to know which one I chose, so now I encourage you to go and cast your vote to help solve the linguistic riddle of Pop vs. Soda!
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