Mark
Friday 3rd September 2010 2:20pm [Edited]
Hampshire
2,701 posts
Quote: Nat Wicks @ September 2 2010, 3:44 PM BST
I would be interested to see how far the results from here:
https://www.comedy.co.uk/fringe/2010/top_10_shows/
go to support/negate Chortles' 'men are funnier than women' article. Do you have a magic program where you can run off the average rating of a male vs female with the stats you collected?
Sorry for the slow reply Nat (I have man flu). I have just seen Chortle's "Men Are Funnier Than Women" 'research' and, speaking personally here, think it's deeply flawed in a number of ways and probably best just ignored.
Firstly, the fact this 'research' has even been undertaken is a bit rude - I thought we had already as a society now finally agreed women are as funny as men?!? Yes, some women comedians may not be funny, but equally some male comedians aren't funny either - it's nothing to do with gender.
Secondly, to run any maths on such a small sample of data is just wrong. 270 reviews from one publication is not going to give any kind of fair consensus on which to draw conclusions.
As you've noticed, we've pooled well over 2,000 reviews from various publications which might put us in a bit of a better position to declare which sex gained the best average score. But, for two reasons, I can't do this...
a) We didn't have the foresight to make a note in our database of gender, so I've no easy way of running the maths.
b) Even if we had, I don't think it'd be helpful to run the maths because let's just say women did come out with a lower average than men (I've no idea if that would be the case or not). In my opinion that still wouldn't mean much because it might just be a couple of bad shows dragging the average down, rather than declaring "women aren't as funny".
I think the only thing we can safely conclude from this data is Chortle's statistics are deeply flawed. As an example, take a look at this show - it highlights why it is wrong to generate overarching statistics using data from a single publication:
https://www.comedy.co.uk/fringe/2010/jennifer_coolidge_yours_for_the_night/