On top of 2016 being a bit of a dumpster fire of a year in general, doesn't it seem like a lot of famous people have died in 2016? I set out to find out if that's true or just my perception. (Also I needed to learn how to use the Rvest package for another project and while I was waiting for the details on that project, I decided to use this as an experiment to play around with it.)

For a full explanation of why I did this and what I found, see http://www.librarianinthecity.com/2017/01/a-silly-experiment-in-quantifying-death-and-doing-better-code/