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Temporal Drift in Wikipedia 'List of...' Article Table Cell Data Type Heterogeneity

This page measures how varied the data types (like numbers, text, dates, and booleans) are within individual data cells in the tables found in Wikipedia's 'List of...' articles. We calculate this using the Shannon diversity index for each table, indicating how evenly spread out the different data types are. We also track the proportion of tables that contain more than a specified number of distinct data types.

These figures are derived from a systematic analysis of a large number of Wikipedia 'List of...' pages. The data reflects the evolution of how structured information is presented and standardised within Wikipedia's vast collection of articles. Understanding this temporal drift is insightful as it offers a unique perspective on changes in data curation and presentation practices over time, a metric not commonly tracked or published elsewhere.

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