The Scientific Formula to Determine the Quality of an Episode

SpongeRoadie UK

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I think it's safe to say that I'm not exactly a person that works on feelings. I'm not a robot. I can form my own opinions over something and it's overall quality. However, it's a pretty hard thing to do. I'm never sure of my own judgements when it's based on opinions. I want stats. I want cold, hard facts.

Unfortunately, it's hard to find cold, hard facts in the one thing I love doing in this website. Judging and analysing SpongeBob episodes.

There's a reason why I'm never happy with the results of my lists and my reviews. Are they "right"? Is there a "right" in this kind of topics? I need something that can make me sure of my choices. This is something I've been looking hard to find. So, I decided to try and find a way to extract numbers and stats from an episod when judging it's quality.

And after some decent amount of work (10 minutes) I think I may have found,... well there's no better way of saying it, the scientific formula for funny. Well, not really. This is still in "Roadie's Workshop" and I'm hoping you guys can help me develop the formula into something better.

Basically, the formula is just counting the hit rate and jokes per minute of an episode. The jokes per minute bit is something familiar. It's something that a lot of fans of various comedy shows have tried to use to determine the humourous quality of a show/episode.

The hit rate thing is something I invented myself. Or at the very least, I didn't take inspiration from anyone. Maybe someone did this already, I don't know. Basically the hit rate of an episode is the percentage of successful jokes in one episode. Obviously, not all jokes are going to get a laugh from us. So we have to count the ones that worked.

I've done some tests. These two episodes were the test bunnies:

As Seen On TV
Duration : 11,5 minutes
Jokes : 37
Successful Jokes : 27
Hit Rate : 73%
Jokes/Minute : 3,22

New Student Starfish
Duration : 11,5 minutes
Jokes : 54
Successful Jokes : 20
Hit Rate : 37%
Jokes/Minute : 4,70

Now obviously, there are some problems with this system. For starters, it does not do the following things:
1. Consider the quality of jokes
2. Separate jokes from actual storytelling
3. Judge the story/characterization and other important parts of the episode
So it is far from a perfect formula to determine how good an episode is.

Any thoughts?

(Also, I've been thinking of making a list, like a top 100, just based on this formula. Too much hard work? :unsure:)
 

imrustyokay

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So with that formula, I would find that most if not all episodes of spongebob a zero. Way to go basing reviews in humor. Leaving out Plot, Diologe, Characterization, and Animation.


I get flipping pissed when people base their reviews o. Humor or how "cute" it was. Mainly because I fined most things "cute" rather creepy, and stupid.
 

SpongeRoadie UK

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imrustyokay said:
So with that formula, I would find that most if not all episodes of spongebob a zero. Way to go basing reviews in humor. Leaving out Plot, Diologe, Characterization, and Animation.


I get flipping pissed when people base their reviews o. Humor or how "cute" it was. Mainly because I fined most things "cute" rather creepy, and stupid.
Well excuse me, I didn't knew you watch SpongeBob for it's deep, meaningful life lessons, political commentary and state of the art CGI effects.

Read the last paragraph.
 

cwn

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Besides, a good portion of the episodes don't exactly deserve any praise for their plot line, so humor is the best way to judge them. (although there are many exceptions)
 

dubbi

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New student starfish was a good episode, one of my favorites. You're rating system determines that it's bad; therefore, the rating system is flawed.
 

dubbi

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cwn said:
Or you know, you have different opinions. Just a thought.
It's widely considered to be a good episode. A good rating system shouldn't be very divergent with popular opinion.
 

NastyPatty2002

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dubbi said:
It's widely considered to be a good episode. A good rating system shouldn't be very divergent with popular opinion.
No, if I wanted to go on the record and say CWN and Band Geeks are ::dolphin noise:: and A Pal for Gary and To Love a Patty are fantastic, then I very much can.

If anything enrages me, it's the assumption that episode ratings should be linear to their popularity. It's an opinion.
 

dubbi

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NastyPatty2002 said:
No, if I wanted to go on the record and say CWN and Band Geeks are ::dolphin noise:: and A Pal for Gary and To Love a Patty are fantastic, then I very much can.

If anything enrages me, it's the assumption that episode ratings should be linear to their popularity. It's an opinion.
You can do whatever you want -- I just wouldn't consider your rating system to be valid. If a movie critic devised a rating system that determined that the godfather was bad, I'd say his rating system was flawed. People are allowed to have and share their opinions. And if people share them -- particularly so if they frame them as an objective "scientific formula" -- they're exposing themselves to criticism.
 

NastyPatty2002

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dubbi said:
You can do whatever you want -- I just wouldn't consider your rating system to be valid. If a movie critic devised a rating system that determined that the godfather was bad, I'd say his rating system was flawed. People are allowed to have and share their opinions. And if people share them, they're exposing themselves to criticism.
Just because a critic doesn't agree with the popular opinion doesn't make it any more invalid. And yeah, they would be exposing themselves to criticism, but reviewers should definitely not feel obliged to give a higher rating than they think it deserves because they're afraid of getting roasted for their opinion.
 

dubbi

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NastyPatty2002 said:
Just because a critic doesn't agree with the popular opinion doesn't make it any more invalid. And yeah, they would be exposing themselves to criticism, but reviewers should definitely not feel obliged to give a higher rating than they think it deserves because they're afraid of getting roasted for their opinion.
This is how the exchange of ideas works, some views are given more credence than others, which doesn't mean that some views are objectively better than others. People have collectively decided that certain films are great -- e.g. the godfather -- and certain films are bad. If someone claimed to have devised a rating system that could objectively determine the quality of any movie, we would expect it to produce good reviews for films that we have established as good. Now, there's nothing wrong with disagreeing with popular views, but likewise a scientific formula for determining the quality of spongebob episodes should accord with the general consensus of informed spongebob fans.
 

NastyPatty2002

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dubbi said:
This is how the exchange of ideas works, some views are given more credence than others, which doesn't mean that some views are objectively better than others. People have collectively decided that certain films are great -- e.g. the godfather -- and certain films are bad. If someone claimed to have devised a rating system that could objectively determine the quality of any movie, we would expect it to produce good reviews for films that we have established as good. Now, there's nothing wrong with disagreeing with popular views, but likewise a scientific formula for determining the quality of spongebob episodes should accord with the general consensus of informed spongebob fans.
Informed SpongeBob fans are subjective as well then. I might think of myself as one but that doesn't mean other people will necessarily think so.

So then how can you measure a consensus if people can't agree on who's informed. Anybody who disagrees with an opinion could call others uninformed because they don't agree with popular views.
 

dubbi

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"Informed SpongeBob fans are subjective as well then. I might think of myself as one but that doesn't mean other people will necessarily think so.


So then how can you measure a consensus if people can't agree on who's informed. Anybody who disagrees with an opinion could call others uninformed because they don't agree with popular views."



Are you suggesting that the view that the godfather is better than the the hottie and the nottie has no more validity than the reverse, despite the legions of film experts, film websites and film academies claiming that the godfather is one of the greatest films of all time, and the merits of the godfather movie and problems with the other film? If so, we have a strong difference of opinion, and continuing to argue would be fruitless. (sorry for the formatting issues)
 

NastyPatty2002

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dubbi said:
Are you claiming that the view that the godfather is better than the the hottie and the hottie has no more validity than the reverse, despite the legions of film experts and film websites and film academies claiming that the godfather is superior, and the merits of the godfather movie and problems with the other film? If so, we so we have strong difference of opinion, and continuing to argue would be fruitless.

Informed SpongeBob fans are subjective as well then. I might think of myself as one but that doesn't mean other people will necessarily think so.

So then how can you measure a consensus if people can't agree on who's informed. Anybody who disagrees with an opinion could call others uninformed because they don't agree with popular views.
I never said that. And I'm not attempting to argue. All I'm saying is that if one think X movie is better than Y movie, despite what other people think, then it shouldn't be a big deal.
 

dubbi

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"I never said that. And I'm not attempting to argue. All I'm saying is that if one think X movie is better than Y movie, despite what other people think, then it shouldn't be a big deal."

I should have said "suggested". You wrote that we can't arrive at a consensus, because we can never decide who's informed. By that logic, we can't arrive at a consensus that the godfather is better than other films that are considered to be among the worst ever made.

It's not a big deal. I'm objecting to OP's claim that he has a devised a scientific formula to determine the quality of an episode. He's not just sharing his opinion -- he's proposing an objective rating system, which I find fault with.
 

ssj4gogita4

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For me, it's the way they deliver a joke, not by how many times it's done.


Love this topic, btw. Might add it to the no snorkel required part of site.
 

The Drifter

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I take this with a grain of salt, because everyone's sense of humor are (usually) different from each other. So something you find funny would be considered boring by me. But otherwise this is an interesting stuff.
 
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