An Application of Statistics to the Three Stooges Films

Robert Davidson and Bob Gardner

Department of Mathematics

East Tennessee State University

Online at: http://www.etsu.edu/math/gardner/stooges/stooges-statistics-In-Class.htm

A Brief History of the Three Stooges

The Six Three Stooges

Moe Howard

Larry Fine

Curly Howard

Shemp Howard

Joe Besser

Joe DeRita

The Three Stooges

1. As a group, in show business for almost 50 years.
2. Made 190 “shorts” with Columbia Pictures.
3. Had their third short, Men in Black (1934), nominated for an Academy Award.
4. Had 4 different people in the role of “the third Stooge.”
5. Were the first to lampoon Adolph Hitler, in You Nazty Spy (1940).

Opening slide for the early Three Stooges films

From: http://www.idivimage.com/files/jwfzehyj2mmummdwn4mr.jpg

Larry, Moe and Curly: 97 shorts between 1934 and 1947.

THIS WILL BE ONE OF THE POPULATIONS FROM WHICH WE SAMPLE!!!

From: http://www.a-1video.com/talking.htm

Opening slide for the Three Stooges films from the Shemp era

Shemp, Larry, and Moe: 77 shorts between 1947 and 1956.

THIS WILL BE ONE OF THE POPULATIONS FROM WHICH WE SAMPLE!!!

From The Three Stooges Scrapbook.

Larry, Joe, and Moe in Fifi Blows Her Top (1958)

Larry, Moe, and Joe: 16 shorts between 1957 and 1959.

THIS WILL BE ONE OF THE POPULATIONS FROM WHICH WE SAMPLE!!!

An advertisement from the 1947 Johnson City Press-Times (Tennessee) for a personal appearance by the Three Stooges on October 25, 1947.

Statistical Tests

In a nutshell, the nature of a statistical test is:

1. to hypothesize a certain relationship within a population or between two or more populations,
2. to take a random sample from the population(s), and
3. to calculate the probability of the random sample(s) being drawn when the hypothesis is assumed to be true.

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The desired outcome is to get the probability from (3) which is small. In this event, the hypothesis is rejected in favor of its alternative.

The Nature of Statistics

The Hypothesis

“To [Joe] Besser’s eternal shame, he had it written into his contract that he would not be subject to slapping or bodily harm.”

“Pure Slap Shtick” by Richard von Busack, Metro Santa Cruz, January 16-22, 1997. Available online at: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/3stooges75yrs.html

From: http://www.threestooges.net/

“Moe and Larry – they were the best. I enjoyed every minute of it with them. In fact, to show you how wonderful they were, I never liked to be hit with anything. And Larry used to say to me ‘don’t worry Joe, I’ll take it.’ Now that’s the kind of guys they were.”

From Stooges: The Men Behind the Mayhem, (DVD) Mackinac Media, 2004.

The null hypothesis is:

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H₀: "The average number of violent acts by Moe against Curly per episode is the same as the average number of violent acts by Moe against Joe."

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The alternative hypothesis is:

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H_a: "The average number of violent acts by Moe against Curly per episode is greater than the average number of violent acts by Moe against Joe."

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Since we suspect that the average for Curly is greater than the average for Joe, we perform a one-tailed test.

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But First, an Example of a Statistical Test

We have no (stated) reason to suspect that there is a difference between the amount of Moe-instituted violence towards Curly versus the amount of Moe-instituted violence towards Shemp.

For the sake of illustration, we test a null hypothesis concerning this.

From:http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews33/3_stooges_collection_vol._1.htm

From:http://lunkhead.net/stoogepics/mls/stoogepics2.html

Since we have no reason to suspect a difference between the amount of violence from Moe to Curly or from Moe to Shemp, we test for a difference and perform a two-tailed test. This gives the following null and alternative hypotheses:

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H₀: "The average number of violent acts by Moe against Curly per episode is the same as the average number of violent acts by Moe against Shemp."

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H_a: "The average number of violent acts by Moe against Curly per episode is different than the average number of violent acts by Moe against Shemp."

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Since we have no reason to suspect a difference between the amount of violence from Moe to Curly or from Moe to Shemp, we test for a difference and perform a two-tailed test.

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Five RANDOMLY selected Shemp episodes and five RANDOMLY selected Curly episodes were chosen. The number of acts of violence by Moe to these Stooges is as follows:

Shemp

Curly

Average: x₁ = 13.2

Average: x₂ = 9.6

Episode (episode #) # of acts

Episode (episode #) # of acts

The sample standard deviation, s, of a sample of size n is:

This yields the following sample standard deviations and variances from our data:

Shemp

s₁ = 4.9670 s₁² = 24.7

Curly

s₂ = 2.3022 s₂² = 5.3

The t statistic for this data is calculated as:

From the above data, we have:

t = 1.470

The two sample t-test assumes that samples are taken from a normal distribution. Given the means and standard deviations of our samples, this is a reasonable assumption.

Since we have no reason to suspect a difference between the amount of violence from Moe to Curly or from Moe to Shemp, we test for a difference and perform a two-tailed test with t = 1.470.

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Excel gives a p-value for this data of:

p = 0.1920.

This means that we could reject the null hypothesis, but only with confidence

(1- p) x 100% = 80.80%.

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A level of confidence of 81% is generally considered insufficient (with the “industry standard” level of confidence set at a minimum of 95%). This means that we should fail to reject the null hypothesis that the means are the same. This does not mean that we accept the null hypothesis, but that we find the data insufficient to give a conclusive decision.

Conclusion?

From: http://www.nndb.com/people/972/000047831/

Now, You Gather the Data

Five RANDOMLY selected Curly episodes and five RANDOMLY selected Joe episodes were chosen. The number of acts of violence by Moe to these Stooges is as follows:

Curly

Joe

The plus signs (+) indicate that the data for these episodes are incomplete. You will complete these data sets soon.

Episode (episode #) # of acts

Episode (episode #) # of acts

We now watch 3 to 5 minute segments of some of the randomly chosen shorts to fill in the missing data.

We want to count every act of violence of Moe towards Curly, and Moe towards Joe.

Moe

Curly

Joe

A Bird in the Head

Columbia short number 89, costarring Curly.

This short is classic Stooges and has the boys wallpapering a room.

Sock-A-Bye Baby

Columbia short number 66, costarring Curly.

A baby is abandoned on the Stooges’ doorstep, and they prepare a meal and diaper change.

Space Ship Sappy

Columbia short number 178, costarring Joe.

The Stooges act as “sailors” on a spaceship to Venus.

We now use Excel to compute the mean, variance, t-statistic, and p-value for our collected data.

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Our data yields a p-value of: 0.00xx

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Therefore, we reject the null hypothesis:

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H₀: "The average number of violent acts by Moe against Curly per episode is the same as the average number of violent acts by Moe against Joe"

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And accept the alternative hypothesis

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H_a: "The average number of violent acts by Moe against Curly per episode is greater than the average number of violent acts by Moe against Joe."

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With confidence (1-p) x 100% = 99.xx%

From:http://www.viewimages.com/Search.aspx?mid=51309234&epmid=3&partner=Google

Why, Soitenly!

Nice!

Possible Problems

• Sample size?

• Episodes are independent?

• Lengths of films are all the same?

• Data is normally distributed?

• Other?

• What counts as an act of violence?

References

1. Fleming, Michael. The Three Stooges-An Illustrated History. New York: Broadway Books, 1999.
2. Forrester, Jeff and Forrester, Tom. The Three Stooges: The Triumphs and Tragedies of The Most Popular Comedy Team of All Time. Los Angeles: Donaldson Books, 2005.
3. Howard, Moe. Moe Howard & The 3 Stooges. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1977.
4. Lenburg, J., Maurer, J.H., and Lenburg, G. The Three Stooges Scrapbook. Citadel Press, 1983.
5. Morian, Don. “The Three Stooges in ‘Academe’: A Summary/Review of Resent Research.” Presented at the Annual Joint Meetings of the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association, Philadelphia, PA, April 12-15, 1995. Available online at: http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/13/ef/e6.pdf

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From:http://www.lunkhead.net/

What about Shemp versus Joe?

Five randomly selected Curly episodes and five randomly selected Joe episodes were chosen. The number of acts of violence by Moe to these Stooges is as follows:

Shemp

Joe

Average: x₁ = 13.2

Average: x₂ = 3.6

Episode (episode #) # of acts

Episode (episode #) # of acts

The sample standard deviation, s, of a sample of size n is:

This yields the following sample standard deviations and variances from our data:

Shemp

s₁ = 4.9670 s₁² = 24.7

Joe

s₂ = 0.8944 s₂² = 0.8

The t statistic for this data is calculated as:

From the above data, Excel gives:

t = 4.251

The two sample t-test assumes that samples are taken from a normal distribution. Given the means and standard deviations of our samples, this is a reasonable assumption.

Excel give a p-value for this data of:

p = 0.0066.

And so we can reject the null hypothesis with a confidence of

(1- p) x 100% = 99.34%.

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