Todd Schneider is a writer and computer programmer. He also writes the software for the Genius music site, and contributes pithy pieces of social commentary. One off his latest contributions is an in-depth analysis of popular animated television series The Simpsons.
The Simpsons was created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company, and it debuted in 1989. To date there have been 597 animated episodes and it stands as the longest-running American scripted primetime television series. Many aspects of The Simpsons have entered popular culture and the show has influenced many other series, both animated and live action.
For his analysis, Todd Schneider used software, as he explains he developed computer “code to parse the available episode scripts and attribute every word of dialogue to a character, then ranked the characters by number of words spoken in the history of the show.”
As to the results of this analysis, the first thing of interest is who speaks the most dialogue. Here it’s revealed that Homer spoke 21 percent of The Simpsons’ 1.3 million words of dialogue from seasons one to 26. This is followed up, in order: Marge, Bart and Lisa (whose combined utterances only just edge Homer, at 26 percent). In total the four Simpsons account for 47 percent of the show’s dialogue.
In terms of the support characters, the five with the greatest screen time are: Mr. Burns, who speaks the most words, followed by Moe, Principal Skinner, Ned Flanders and Krusty. Another interesting statistic Schneider extracts is gender. Of the top 15 support characters only one is female — Mrs. Krabappel — at number 15.
There is an array of other interesting statistics collated by Schneider, from writers to ratings, and to the fictional locations used on the show. For Simpsons fans or those interested in how television shows are put together and evolve, the data presents a fascinating peak at pop culture.
