Ask HN: Mystery behind O'Reilly's Cover animals
On his LinkedIn, he has asked us to guess the animal that might appear on the cover and the winner gets a copy of the book once published.
I was able to find out that:
The idea of using animals on the covers of O’Reilly’s books came from Edie Freedman, a creative director who was hired by Tim O’Reilly in the late 1980s.
Freedman was inspired by the weird and obscure terms associated with Unix, which reminded her of Dungeons and Dragons, a game popular with geeks. She sketched some animal illustrations based on an old engraving book and presented them to O’Reilly, who liked their quirkiness and originality.
The animals are chosen to match the topic, tone, and personality of each book, sometimes with humorous or symbolic connections.
Now, it has started that craving that I must predict that animal.
I am at the point where I have scraped the data of 1261 so far published books and hoping to make a prediction.
Should I try it and do you have any ideas about this matter?