Thanks to our partnership with Smith College, WBI is pleased to share that we have five interns this summer! Have you ever wondered how many minifig heads are female? And of those, how many are yellow? How many women of colour have been represented in minfig form? How many different expressions do those minifigs have? How many minifigs have been included in the CMF series over time? Our interns will be pulling data from Brickset, Bricklink and other places to develop answers to all of these questions and more! Keep an eye on our blog as we share some of the results from this study. Because of COVID-19, these women will be performing all their work remotely, and we’re having group video chats regularly.
Please join us in welcoming the 2020 WBI interns. We asked each of them to tell us a recent book they’d read and where they’d like to travel (when we’re all able to travel again!).
Elise is a computer science major with a minor in data science, and is based on Massachusetts. Elise recently read Think Like a Freak, by the same authors as Freakonomics. She wants to go to Holland, which is something she’s hoping to do when she’s studying abroad in Denmark next year.
Emelyn graduated this spring from Smith with a degree in engineering and environmental science and policy, and is also from Massachusetts. Emelyn has been a LEGO fan since she was 10. She’s currently reading Climate Refugees by Collectif Argos, and is looking forward to taking her graduation trip to Japan, which had to be postponed due to the pandemic.
Emma is pursuing a degree in data science and linguistics, and comes from Illionois. One of her recently read books is Swamplandia, by Karen Russell. One of the places on her travel list is Korea, in order to partake of some truly spicy food.
Sophie is studying for her degree in engineering, and joins us from Rhode Island. Sophie introduced us to the book Women Who Made a Difference by Malcolm Forbes. Her next trip may be more doable than some – to backpack in the Rocky Mountains.
Stephanie is a history major with a minor in archaeology, and is based in Oregon. Stephanie started building with LEGO at age 12 and is a fan of the Creator Expert sets. She’s recently read Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff. Her travel list is long, but her top priority is to make it to Egypt.
These very capable women will be working several projects in addition to working with data to uncover its secrets. They’ll also be analyzing LEGO marketing materials and catalogues, developing the WBI equity test, and more.
The first update from our intern team should be ready in about a week. Please let us know if there’s a particular question you’d like to have answered. You can reach us on our Facebook page or Instagram, or join us at our private Facebook group.
1 comment
Teresa Elsmore
Welcome! This is brilliant 🙂
I’d be interested to know what roles female figs have had and how many times. I.e. there is 1x geisha and 3x Doctor and a billion X princess etc. And plotted against time.
I appreciate that that data will not be quick or easy to find & will most probably be a fully manual and laborious process, but I think it would be interesting to see the representation and how it has changed over time.