Incorporating a Halloween-themed episode into a television series season is not a new thing. In the 1960s, it started with Halloween-y television shows like Bewitched, The Addams Family, and The Twilight Zone. By the early 1970s, the idea spread to mainstream television programs with The Brady Bunch (1972), Happy Days…
Trilogies are common in sci-fi and fantasy books and movies, fitting nicely into the broad story template known as the hero's journey, where a central character goes on an adventure, wins a victory, and comes home changed. "If you make a trilogy, the whole point is to get to…
Women make up just 39% of speaking roles on television and 32% in movies, according to recently released research by the San Diego State University's Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film. Of those roles, male characters are significantly more likely to be seen working (about 60%…
Which movies and characters have the most dialogue? Last April, Polygraph complied and analyzed 2,000 screenplays to study gender in film dialogue. This analysis uses their summary dataset (for each movie: its characters, the number of words they spoke, their age, and gender) paired with data scraped from IMDb…
As of December 21, Radio Locator shows that more than 350 stations in the U.S. and Canada have switched to playing holiday music around the clock. Christmas music is a unique phenomenon - no other holiday has such popular and specific music to make stations bench Carrie Underwood and…
Write-in votes are a uniquely American tradition: nowhere else in the world can you cast a vote for a candidate not included on the ballot. With two of the least popular candidates ever running for president, Americans may turn to write-in votes. According to CNN, Google searches for “write-in” votes…
We analyzed the scores of thousands of movies to identify which actors and actresses are beloved by the audience—even though critics say their movies suck. If you love, hate, or love to hate Adam Sandler, Gerard Butler, Clint Eastwood, or a certain Chris Farley sidekick, you might want to…
Pokémon GO has taken the world by storm. Since its release on July 6, the augmented reality app has caught the attention of millions around the globe, with 23 million daily active users in the U.S. alone. With the aim to "Catch 'Em All," Pokémon GO users…
Billboard has published a Year-End Hot 100 every December since 1958. The chart measures the performance of singles in the U.S. throughout the year. Using R, I’ve combined the lyrics from 50 years of Billboard Year-End Hot 100 (1965-2015) into one dataset for analysis. You can download that…
Which neighborhoods in Fargo-Moorhead have the most noise complaints? Do the 30,000 college students in Fargo-Moorhead drive those complaints? Below are 1,241 loud party complaint dispatches in 2015 compiled using area police dispatch logs available in near-real time via the Red River Regional Dispatch Center. North Dakota State…