Ms. (Katherine) Milkman (Princeton ’04), who has a minor in American studies, read 442 stories printed in The New Yorker from Oct. 5, 1992, to Sept. 17, 2001, and built a substantial database. She then constructed a series of rococo mathematical tests to discern, among other things, whether certain fiction editors at the magazine had a specific impact on the type of fiction that was published, the sex of authors and the race of characters…
Among Ms. Milkman’s least shocking findings was that characters in New Yorker fiction tend to live in the same places New Yorker readers do, not the United States as a whole…
Ms. Milkman is by all accounts, including her own, a normal college student.
– David Carr, reporting on Ms Milkman’s senior thesis in the NY Times