Some Snazzy Statistics (Disney Comics Demographics)
Dec 10, 2018 13:22:23 GMT
Matilda, Zantaf, and 3 more like this
Post by Scrooge MacDuck on Dec 10, 2018 13:22:23 GMT
I think the Wiki project is reaching a stage where the numbers involved start to be significant enough for somewhat-reliable statistics to emerge, so here are a few:
Gender:
So females clock at about a third of relevant characters in Disney comics lore. That sounds about right. Note that I say relevant; the data I have is obviously the characters indexed on the Wiki, and that's only the "interesting" ones — unnamed background characters don't get names.
Species:
So for simplicity's sake I lumped all species with less than 4 archived members into a big “Other” category which comprises 30.65 percent of the whole. The 14.81% of humans can be attributed to the movie characters like Captain Hook and his pirates skewing the numbers.
The most interesting thing to be found out using this diagram must be, I think, that ducks (17.29%) actually outnumber dogs (14.04%) somewhat significantly. This goes against our intuitions, but, of course, a majority of dog characters are background randoms, so they don't factor in the dataset I used. Similarly, it shouldn't be that surprising that ducks and dogs are so far ahead of pigs (a miserable 1.11%): so you've got the Mayor, and Peter Pig, and the 3 Little Pigs, and Argus McSwine. Can you name another important pig character offhand? Betcha can't. Most pigs are, again, background characters of little importance.
It is perhaps interesting to note that 4.11% of Disney comics characters are aliens, and 3.42% are computers or robots. Who knew?
Bonus: top 10 species according to these stats:
Who'd have guessed that a Disney character was more likely to be an alien that Mickey Mouse?
Occupations:
(I should warn you that, more out of forgetfulness than anything else, mark that I overlooked the "Other" category for this one. People not fitting into any of the categories below are simply not accounted for. Sorry.)
…
…yes, it turns out that the number one most common occupation in the Duckverse is… thievery, at a whopping 14.05%, followed by, er, witchcraft, at 9.92%.
In fairness, there's some overlap. Supervillains (2.62%) and conmen (3.99%) are both likely to also be thieves. Still, I was surprised.
We then return to a semblance of normalcy; the number three spot goes to businessmen, at 8.40%; having so many characters be business rivals of Scrooge will do that. This is closely followed by sailors, 8.26%, and scientists, 7.85% (though again, many supervillains are also scientists).
After that we head right back to wonderland with number 6 — pirates (6.89%). Who, obviously, were also propping up the number of sailors above, but let's ignore that. Their runners-up are adventurers (5.37%) at Number 7, soldiers (4.55%) at Number 8, and actors (4.27%) at Number 9. Conmen (3.99%) are at the bottom of the Top Ten.
Bonus: So You're A Scientist In the Donald Duck Universe:
With the power of, well, science, I have determined…
…that you are almost as likely to be an inventor as anything else; that you have just about 15%'s chance of being an evil mad scientist; that you are a baffling 6.82% likely to be an alchemist, of all things. You are equally likely to be a chemist or an archeologist (about 9%). The chances of your being a geologist or a ufologist are equal, and, as it were, equally remote. Barely better are your odds of being a zoologist.
…
…you shouldn't take that last one too seriously, except for the basic facts that mad scientist and inventors are overrepresented in Disney comics; the number of scientist is low enough that some of the categories I had to use had only one member (go on, guess which two I'm talking about). And besides, there's a lot of pluridisciplinarians in Disney comics lore; Gyro, Ludwig, Gibert, Emil Eagle come to mind.
In general, you shouldn't take any of this nonsense too seriously; my numbers are large enough to be interesting, but not enough so to be in any way reliable. I'll probably redo this in a year; it will be interesting to see how much the new data will have affected the trends. I have a sneaking suspicion, for example, that as our coverage of the Disney movies augments, so will the percentage of humans, but it'll eventually stabilize in a year or two and eventually fall behind dogs and ducks. And if DuckTales 2017 continues the way it started, the percentage of adventurers is going to keep increasing.
We'll see.
Gender:
So females clock at about a third of relevant characters in Disney comics lore. That sounds about right. Note that I say relevant; the data I have is obviously the characters indexed on the Wiki, and that's only the "interesting" ones — unnamed background characters don't get names.
Species:
So for simplicity's sake I lumped all species with less than 4 archived members into a big “Other” category which comprises 30.65 percent of the whole. The 14.81% of humans can be attributed to the movie characters like Captain Hook and his pirates skewing the numbers.
The most interesting thing to be found out using this diagram must be, I think, that ducks (17.29%) actually outnumber dogs (14.04%) somewhat significantly. This goes against our intuitions, but, of course, a majority of dog characters are background randoms, so they don't factor in the dataset I used. Similarly, it shouldn't be that surprising that ducks and dogs are so far ahead of pigs (a miserable 1.11%): so you've got the Mayor, and Peter Pig, and the 3 Little Pigs, and Argus McSwine. Can you name another important pig character offhand? Betcha can't. Most pigs are, again, background characters of little importance.
It is perhaps interesting to note that 4.11% of Disney comics characters are aliens, and 3.42% are computers or robots. Who knew?
Bonus: top 10 species according to these stats:
- Ducks
- Humans
- Dogs
- Aliens
- Robots
- Mice
- Cockatoos
- Cats
- Parrots
- Other Birds
Who'd have guessed that a Disney character was more likely to be an alien that Mickey Mouse?
Occupations:
(I should warn you that, more out of forgetfulness than anything else, mark that I overlooked the "Other" category for this one. People not fitting into any of the categories below are simply not accounted for. Sorry.)
…
…yes, it turns out that the number one most common occupation in the Duckverse is… thievery, at a whopping 14.05%, followed by, er, witchcraft, at 9.92%.
In fairness, there's some overlap. Supervillains (2.62%) and conmen (3.99%) are both likely to also be thieves. Still, I was surprised.
We then return to a semblance of normalcy; the number three spot goes to businessmen, at 8.40%; having so many characters be business rivals of Scrooge will do that. This is closely followed by sailors, 8.26%, and scientists, 7.85% (though again, many supervillains are also scientists).
After that we head right back to wonderland with number 6 — pirates (6.89%). Who, obviously, were also propping up the number of sailors above, but let's ignore that. Their runners-up are adventurers (5.37%) at Number 7, soldiers (4.55%) at Number 8, and actors (4.27%) at Number 9. Conmen (3.99%) are at the bottom of the Top Ten.
Bonus: So You're A Scientist In the Donald Duck Universe:
With the power of, well, science, I have determined…
…that you are almost as likely to be an inventor as anything else; that you have just about 15%'s chance of being an evil mad scientist; that you are a baffling 6.82% likely to be an alchemist, of all things. You are equally likely to be a chemist or an archeologist (about 9%). The chances of your being a geologist or a ufologist are equal, and, as it were, equally remote. Barely better are your odds of being a zoologist.
…
…you shouldn't take that last one too seriously, except for the basic facts that mad scientist and inventors are overrepresented in Disney comics; the number of scientist is low enough that some of the categories I had to use had only one member (go on, guess which two I'm talking about). And besides, there's a lot of pluridisciplinarians in Disney comics lore; Gyro, Ludwig, Gibert, Emil Eagle come to mind.
In general, you shouldn't take any of this nonsense too seriously; my numbers are large enough to be interesting, but not enough so to be in any way reliable. I'll probably redo this in a year; it will be interesting to see how much the new data will have affected the trends. I have a sneaking suspicion, for example, that as our coverage of the Disney movies augments, so will the percentage of humans, but it'll eventually stabilize in a year or two and eventually fall behind dogs and ducks. And if DuckTales 2017 continues the way it started, the percentage of adventurers is going to keep increasing.
We'll see.
