Burgher Beauties

What Data Science says about Miss World

Caroline Jurie became the second Sri Lankan to win the Mrs. World Pageant; the first being Rosy Senanayake, who won the inaugural competition in 1984. With six, the United States has the most number of wins by country. Followed by Russia, Peru and Sri Lanka, which have two wins each.

Thisuri Wanniarachchi made an interesting (and somewhat contraversial) tweet about how an Euro-centric standard of beauty might disproportionately influence Miss World (and other beauty pageants). And, for this reason, the (apparent) increased likelihood of Sri Lankan Burgher women to perform well in such competitions.

There seemed to be some truth to this claim. Afterall, both Jurie and Senanayake had Burgher heritage. But I was curious as to “how true” this was. Could we answer this question data scientifically?

Was a Data-Driven answer to the question, “What types of Sri Lankan women do well at international beauty pageants?”

Last Names

One method would be to analyse the last names (surnames) of contestants. See who had Sinhala names, and Tamil names, and Moor or Malay names. And Burgher names.