Civil engineering doctorates awarded

From 2008 to 2021, civil engineering doctorates awarded in the US tracked the name Arya with a 0.97 correlation, suggesting that the structural engineering community has been more influenced by Game of Thrones than it publicly acknowledges. Arya as a name was essentially nonexistent in 2008, peaked in the mid-2010s alongside Westerosi drama, and has since moderated. Civil engineering PhDs followed a similar arc, for reasons that have nothing to do with dragons.

Arya as a baby name surged in the US primarily from 2011 onward, closely tracking Game of Thrones viewership and the cultural ascendancy of the character Arya Stark, peaking in the late 2010s. Civil engineering doctorate awards grew over a similar period partly due to federal infrastructure interest, increased graduate enrollment, and NSF funding patterns that expanded STEM doctoral programs across engineering disciplines in the 2010s. Both series trace bell-ish curves across the 2008-2021 window, and two series that rise and then plateau together will mechanically produce high correlations.

Pop culture and federal funding policy are both capable of producing similar-shaped curves, and similar-shaped curves are all that correlation measures. The graph cannot tell you which dragon named which bridge.