Comments on: Quanta of Cage: Standard Deviation of Nicolas Cage Movies’ IMDB Ratings

By: bv0530

bv0530 — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 02:57:45 +0000

No matter what is said, who would I sleep with? Cruise, Hanks or Cage? Cage wins…

By: Norman

Norman — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:09:42 +0000

Just FYI, I tried this same analysis on 37 of Brad Pitt’s films from 1989 through 1999 (excluded TV and voice-only work). I realize the time frame is different, but his average came out between Hanks and Cruise, and his standard deviation was 1.25!

So, if we want to talk about someone who isn’t reliable… maybe Nic Cage isn’t the best target after all.

By: lee

lee — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:52:07 +0000

Yup. To my knowledge, there aren’t any shortcuts to directly accessing the IMDB ratings database.

For the analysis I did on the top 250 list, that was mostly a copy-paste job from the display on the IMDB website (with some complications/data massaging).

And while we’re on the topic of manual data entry, the Peak Rock/Rolling Stones 500 data entry was… almost 100 percent manual.

By: perich

perich — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 14:29:24 +0000

Lee: did you manually copy the data from IMDb, page by page?

By: lee

lee — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 04:11:36 +0000

OK stats people, here’s the raw data. Knock yourselves out:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AuMWmmHpW80UdGRKOUpJSmdhLVdZdi1DR3J2MFVwdUE&hl=en

(there are some tabs with the remnants of Excel pivot tables, which obviously aren’t supported in Google Docs.)

By: lee

lee — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 22:52:52 +0000

@Turin: Corrected in the article. That pretty much applies to every single date that I’ve written out in the first months of this new year.

@Greg: I agree that more comparisons would have been better, which I would have done if I had more time/resources.

Readers, this is why you should buy more t-shirts and crap on Amazon! Then we could hire a research assistant–AND a copy checker!

By: Turin Hurinson

Turin Hurinson — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 22:02:54 +0000

Surely you meant “data current as of January 11, 2010″ not “2009″?

By: Norman

Norman — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 18:20:06 +0000

I should begin by say that I *am* a statistician. Overall I like this comparison as a rough means to gain insight. There are all kinds of ways to complicate it; a truly thorough analysis would control for other factors such as director, film budget, and costars. However, the simplicity of this approach makes it easy to get a sense of where the actors’ relative output stand.

That said, Clio is 100% right about Tom Hanks. His graph clearly has what we statisticians call a structural break occurring at A League of Their Own. Hanks’ average film quality take a huge leap at this point, which is why the histogram you plot has multiple peaks. While Cruise and Cage seem to be drawing from the same distribution over time (with a possible upward trend in Cruise’s case? hard to tell without more complex analysis), Hanks experiences a jump between two distributions which, I suspect, would each in themselves have a lower SD than either of the other actors.

My point is that, once we take into account the huge shift in Hanks’ career, I believe Cage has a lower average quality AND a higher SD than either of the others. Now, whether the difference is what we call “statistically significant” is another question entirely ;)

By: lee

lee — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 18:03:45 +0000

@pFransk, Thanks for pointing that out. Though you should have begun your statement with “well, actually.” ;-) Corrected in the article.

I’ll release the raw data tonight and possibly post some additional graphs tonight if others want to get their hands dirty with the data.

@MaxPolun, I’d love to hear more about the phenomenon of Cage-hating in general. Is part of the Cage backlash that he’s in so freaking many movies? 45 starring roles (as measured by “appears prominently on the DVD cover both in name and in picture”) over the course of 15 years = 3 movies per year. And I even excluded a few minor roles and animation voice work.

Is he spreading himself too thin? Or made more annoying by his ubiquity?

As for “National Treasure,” I refer you to a brief analysis I did of that movie as a “benchmark movie;” that is, a movie in which every great thing about is balanced out by something equally terrible:

http://www.overthinkingit.com/2009/10/23/benchmark-movies/3/

By: Greg

Greg — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:55:42 +0000

I think we need an unbelievably unfair comparison or two to give real meaning to the statistics. What do Brad Pitt’s graphs look like?

Also, Nicolas Cage has been in more movies than either of the other two in this article. What effect does that have on things?

The analysis as it stands lacks meaning without a good frame of reference.