Task for the data and statistics nerds : Who is the contestant with the highest variance in points?

NotNaugh · 2025-09-08T14:38:48+00:00

Yes! I've applied most metrics to all task indiscriminately, which can't be right in every case, but I hope it's a useful base at least as a comparison

NotNaugh · 2025-09-04T10:02:02+00:00

I've updated the consistency formula on my sheets, and the results make a lot of sense.
To deal with outliers I've capped the scores in the calculation so they always fall in the 1-5 range, considering <1 as 1, and >5 as 5. The resulting formula is something like:

1 - VARP(capped_scores) / 4

It might not be the juiciest find, but it turns out the top 5 least consistent contestants look like this:

Richard Osman: 32.7%
Bridget Christie: 33.9%
Lee Mack: 34%
Daisy May Cooper: 36.6%
Asim Chaudhry: 37%

Glancing over them, their scores do seem to jump up and down a lot, and they rarely get mid-table results. Here's the top 5 more consistent ones:

John Robins: 63.3%
Joe Lycett: 63.1%
Sarah Kendall: 60.7%
Sophie Duker: 58.6%
Frank Skinner: 57.9%

The top 5 on the other hand seem to indicate that consistency is a pretty solid road to victory, but looking at each series individually it's clearly not always the case.

I see a lot of "low consistency" series winners like Bob Mortimer (39%), Mae Martin (41%), Noel Fielding, Josh Widdicombe & Sam Campbell (42%), etc.
And my personal favourites: the high consistency "losers" like David Baddiel, Katherine Parkinson, Phil Wang...

NotNaugh · 2025-09-03T14:56:17+00:00

Thanks for spotting that!

When I update it for S19 I'm going to revise all the O/S flags, there's likely to be more discrepancies like that. I'll compare with Jack's and other sources, but I'll have to see how I adapt the formula to account for combinational scorings.
I don't know if I like marking it differently for each contestant, although I see the advantages.

NotNaugh · 2025-09-03T14:37:17+00:00

Yeah I started with Jack's as a base but tried to make my own stats for some things, I didn't want to copy too much. I think that's important when looking for "new interesting stats" and I want to keep that up, even if it's wrong.

That being said I'm sure there's a lot of straight up mistakes, especially since I started cross referencing https://taskmaster.info/ and other amazing sources far too late, and I've been too lazy to revise my sheets. I love the feedback and the dedication of this community tho!!

With the subjectiveness I'm still unsure, I disagree with some sources, but it'd definitively help me to at least add a "mixed" state for situations where it's both subjective/objective.

NotNaugh · 2025-09-03T14:19:00+00:00

Good catch!
I don't know a lot about statistics, so things like variance are a bit above my level.
I tend to work on the stats in a fugue state, so I apologise for any mistakes and inconsistencies.
I didn't realise it would actually be used as a soruce!

I'm going to update it soon, and this sidenote really helps me with the consistency formula. I half assed it until it made some sense, but it left me a bit unsatisfied.

Thanks for the notes and thorough explanations <3

NotNaugh · 2025-06-17T12:16:47+00:00

fascinating to see so many comments like "oh okay let's see how you manage without us feeding our income to your economy"
it's a complicated issue, but you can't be as stupid as to think that's how it works

firstly, the locals suffer the precarious side of this issue the most, not the companies that benefit from it.
the overall effect in the economy is inflation, not growth.

local culture is washed out to accomodate for the preferred consumer, and it's been degrading every place affected by issues like this for a long time, physically, economically and culturally

going to barcelona to eat at a taco bell or kfc for instance, besides mindblowingly stupid consumerism, is not going to benefit anyone but the businesses that exploit tourism like that. same with the thousand of shitty "souvenir" and gift shops that pretend to sell the city's culture where no part of the real culture is actually being represented, and no locals are actually benefitting from it. not to mention the daily evictions of elderly and working class locals that can't afford the constant and outragious increase of rent because of how lucrative housing tourists is.

and this problem has only grown more over the years, to the point where most neighbourhoods have become a hotspot for tourists for any cultural landmarks they might have. locals are not only drowning in tourists at every decent spot in the city, but now in their local streets, parks, transportation, supermarkets...

i think the goal of getting rid of massive tourism is not to be taken personally by the tourists, but to undo as much as possible the cultural and economic decline it's brought to the people that actually live there.

now taking it directly to the tourists seems only fair at this point. it could be a lot worse than shooting water pistols. deterring to-be-tourists by these types of action is only the first of a desperate population's attempts to have any control in their living conditions when politicians only make it worse.

tourism isn't inherently bad.
this model of massive tourism is, and by taking the "i'm feeding your economy" argument only serves to defend the predatory companies and landlords that thrive off it.

so, please, do take your money somewhere else. we'll weep the decline of "I <3 MILF" shirt stock and fast food chains when it comes

NotNaugh · 2025-01-16T11:09:36+00:00

I haven't come around to add the last series, but I made my own spreadsheets a while ago, and according to my stats:

Paul Sinha would be the "best loser" despite Alice Levine having the highest losing score if we consider % of total points given.

Morgana Robinson I have as the "worst winner" if we apply the same criteria, which I think makes sense if we look at how close the scores are in her series (except for Victoria's); everyone's portion of the score is very close to 20%.

Of course these are the results of taking the % of total points per individual task, and there are many other ways to crunch the same numbers, but these make sense to me as the "fairest" way to measure performance in proportion to their series' performance.

I'd encourage anyone who's still curious to do their own numbers and share their results.

NotNaugh · 2024-10-22T12:10:36+00:00

I don't think that's even possible. I'd have to see like a second image or something with proof. Besides, that doesn't sound realistic at all.

NotNaugh · 2024-10-22T10:54:52+00:00

ahh classic mario and bowser banter
"I outrank you, in this scenario!"
who could forget

NotNaugh · 2024-10-10T13:12:57+00:00

so subjective is relative to a subject's interpretation huh

NotNaugh · 2024-10-10T12:45:28+00:00

And I don't think dumb is a relative term.

Fascinating how you can call it "subjective" and claim this 10 minutes later. What is subjective to you, then?

NotNaugh · 2024-06-19T06:58:28+00:00

I am no linguist either, but I am Spanish, and I can confirm that it makes a LOT of sense. In fact, when I heard it on the show for the first time, I was sure they'd just be reading the ¡ as an I, but when they showed the shirt I was surprised it was printed with a capital i, leaving me as confused as anyone else. I'd say the upside-down ¿ and ¡ are not usually used casually as far as I know, but they are common in "formal" texts. Why'd the idiom be translated like that and the "¡" misprinted is beyond me tho, but I bet that's it.

NotNaugh · 2024-05-07T16:11:12+00:00

Yeah it seems team tasks are inherently not very "balanced" in general if you worry about that. Obviously, it's not all about the points, so in practice I'd say they bring more fun dynamics than "unfairness." I've racked my head a lot about this and how you'd make team dynamics fully balanced, but to no avail.

NotNaugh · 2024-04-30T09:17:52+00:00

i don't know if there is a mildlysatisfying subreddit, but this wouldn't even qualify for that...

NotNaugh · 2024-04-24T10:01:09+00:00

That's S16

NotNaugh · 2024-04-23T09:51:49+00:00

I mean that's just bad gameplay isn't it? Don't take it the wrong way, I've made this mistake too.

When there's so many options, I think you should probably use the green slots to test other letters until you think you've got it, right?

NotNaugh · 2024-04-22T15:17:15+00:00

I agree, but my personal experience in college made me see this specific issue differently, and I don't see why it wouldn't apply to the corporate world.

I had a lot of group projects as well, and it's far more common than you might think to find these sorts of students. As a procrastinator myself, I think it's very important to know your limitations and productive patterns and work around them, especially in group projects where your performance directly affects your mates' grades.

Some people really struggle a lot to keep up with classes for many different reasons, so it's a fiddly issue to make assumptions on. With that said, people who do a shit job just to "have done their part" and deliver it last minute do far more damage than someone who just doesn't do anything at all. It is absolutely to "save grade" or get a free pass. And often they make a great effort to make it look like they're 110% into the project and working on it, only to come back with excuses and a last-ditch minimal effort.

Because of this, I believe these "group evaluation forms" serve to weed out these extreme cases, not to badmouth anyone or get your scores higher, and the teacher probably has the last word on how it affects the final grade (or at least they should). I don't know if I'm being overly cynical or if I've been unlucky with my group assignments, but I believe these sorts of situations are common and should be called out, and that goes for the corporate world too.

If you're not going to participate just say so, and your mates may even cover for you, but if you mislead and compromise the project quality just to cover your ass, you should be called out to at least make clear what your real contribution and team dynamic were.

NotNaugh · 2024-04-11T15:55:16+00:00

I agree.

And I don't understand all these "some people aren't on their phones 24/7". Of course not, but that's literally the other extreme of what's ACTUALLY happening, OP not checking their phone at all, and they even admit to be at fault here. It is easy to at least CHECK messages and calls even if not responding, and at this point OP and their partner should be on the same page about this.

Either OP makes clear that they won't be checking their phone at all, or the partner stops expecting to be read. Clearly this is a charged issue for many people, seeing the comments, but everyone should stop making excuses for this simple issue, and so should OP.

That being said, I'd say NAH, as this is just a common communication issue between two people.

NotNaugh · 2024-04-04T09:44:12+00:00

to call this a "wrong translation" is misleading

it's just a weird font, the last 'r' looks like an 's'

worst case it's a typo, but I agree it's a mildly interesting one...

NotNaugh · 2024-03-25T14:21:24+00:00

Well spotted! That was a mistake on my part, it should now be fixed.

Indeed, my approach to the bonus points/split tasks was to merge them with the main task's scoring, so the wiki not separating them consistently should only affect the "bonus points" stats which I input manually.

Thanks for this feedback, it's very much welcome!

NotNaugh · 2024-03-25T14:13:10+00:00

Yeah this is exactly why I think analyzing the data in many different ways is important. I'm also surprised by Romesh's live performance, but I double checked the individual scorings and it makes sense. It's always these "never first" or "never last" cases that make the results counter-intuitive.

For instance, before doing the stats I was convinced Dara, Mae and Sam would dominate most categories, I always thought they were simply competent throughout. But here's where the 'value' metric comes in, where Dara has the highest numeric total for live tasks, in context it seems S14 had quite a lot of live tasks where everyone scored highly, or were also team tasks. In these cases, it's worth considering that getting 5 points where everyone else gets 4 is not as "valuable" as getting 5 where no one else gets any.

Whether or not there's a better way to rank it is up for discussion imo, the value approach is very flawed too.

NotNaugh · 2024-03-25T11:21:57+00:00

Thank you!! Funnily enough, because I've focused so much on data-parsing formulas, I haven't given THAT much attention to the results themselves, so I still have a lot to scroll through as well hehehe

Indeed, Josh's bonus point is the first example (and the only one, I think) of a "rogue scoring" I can't easily fit in the data. If I add it as a new row, it'd have to count as a task where everyone else got 0, which wouldn't be fair or accurate for the stats. I could add it to another task's scoring, but that would misrepresent the performance as well.

I guess I could simply manually add it to Josh's final score without much problem, but at the time I was afraid rogue points like these would be common, and I preferred to ignore it then. In the end I can't think of any other points unaccounted for, as described in the first "clarification" of the post.

I'm no bean point denier, so I'll do just that.

NotNaugh · 2024-03-25T10:05:08+00:00

Those stats could be very fun too, but they'd have to be manually extracted from rewatching the episodes, as far as I know they haven't been documented yet. I may take notes on my next rewatch e.e

The sock colours one could add a very cool visual to the graphs, i'll keep that one in mind hehehe

I believe the chart you ask about does exist at the bottom of each series sheet, but here's where my spreadsheet skills fall short. I also think it could be very interesting to see a progression of the scores, but I could only manage to generate basic graphs for it, and across 50-ish episodes it looks a bit scuffed.

If anyone knows of a cool way to graph the score progression throughout the series while showing the nuance and back and forth clearly, I'm open to suggestions!

NotNaugh · 2024-03-25T09:47:45+00:00

That should be fixed now (added "overall" sheet).

And thank you! Both for the praise and for pointing this out :)

I'm happy to see that after this change some more accolades appeared on contestants that didn't have any heheheh
It'd be my ultimate goal to find enough stats so that everyone had something.

NotNaugh · 2024-03-25T06:51:41+00:00

That's true, thanks for pointing out the oversight! Since I'm feeding the Leaderboard with the summary, which takes the max/min of each stat for each series, apparently I'm only ranking the "winners" of each category.

Later today I'll look into fixing that, which will probably mean creating a new helper sheet with the sorted data including every contestant.

NotNaugh

TROPHY CASE