CaptainCorc’s ChatStats

If you don't want to bother with my scintillating discussion of statistics, click here to see October's results.

The importance of statistics can hardly be over emphasized. Especially when compiling a compendium such as Diana is doing by archiving the daily logs from the chat rooms. Why, goodness me, without statistics we would not know, for example, that TomNine goes into a catatonic state every August wherein no part of him functions other than his twitching fingers on the keyboard of his WebTV. It was all I could do to beat him that month. I had to outline a Valkyrie saga and go through three G&S libretti just to keep up with him.

It all began with a simple post count for the month of August as a supplement to my chat write up for the month. Click here if you wish to revel in Tom's victory. For September, Diana suggested a word count be added and that the lists be expanded to include the top twenty instead of just the top eleven (that was in case anyone thought it would be unfair to include Diana herself in the tally). Also during September, the question arose as to why I disqualified Clepsydra along with myself. The answer was that she was and is by far the most prolific chatter of all. Nobody comes close. Diana suggested putting her in a special division for clocks, and I was only too happy to oblige. Click here to see September's results.

In October, I began toying with the idea of tracking watches in order to be able to litter the stats section with profound and meaningless graphs and charts. At the same time, a protest was lodged by FistMan that there was too much emphasis on quantity as opposed to quality. Well, the answer to that was obvious. All I needed to do was find a way to apply the relentlessly accurate grammar checker from Microsoft Word97 to the chat postings. Said relentless accuracy inspired a category which I hope will become the most coveted of all: The Microsoft Stumping Average or MSA. If you crash the routine, or just force the old grammar checker to kick out zeroes, it counts toward your MSA, which is calculated just like a batting average, ie, number of stumpers divided by total posts. I have also made use of the chatroom ID tags to gather up all of ShyGuy's postings under one monicker. And to institute a category for most nicknames used in the course of a month. Those who objected strenuously to the tags will not be included in any of these calculations. Those who wish to object strenuously can take it up with Diana.

If you made it all the way down here, you can click here to see Octobers expanded results.

For November, I added two new categories, post of the month for age level and readability.

In December, my posting chart disappears in deference to Diana's count which appears on the message board main page.