FakeSteve: Mirror Mirror on the Wall, who's the best Power Rank writer of them all?
Of course, rather than actually reading the comments section to the power rank or looking at player records, I decide to go do something only tangentially related (if at all) to actual accuracy or skill in writing power ranks. I looked at the number of comments each power rank received, and the total number of pageviews. Still ignoring the actual content of the power ranks and the quality of the comments therein, I bravely forged ahead for a good two minutes. Entering data into a spreadsheet like a good corporate drone, slaving away for the benefit of the
But I digress. After entering data into Excel for a minute or two, I decided to calculate something with my data. Unfortunately, I overlooked one critical fact: I was using Excel. Shit. After staring blankly at the Excel spreadsheet for a minute, I decided I should know what I wanted to calculate first. I decided on the ratio of posts to views. I wasn't sure what this statistic might actually mean, but of course that didn't stop me (Excel did). Eventually I rationalized it after the fact by saying that it could represent how controversial the power rank was: the higher the ratio of posting to viewing, the more people got butthurt over it. In other words, it could mean that more people posted without reading the thread. With my flimsy justification firmly in hand (and something else that was firm in my hand), I went to check if there was anything new in the TL blog section. No new blogs from crazie-penguin. Damn. Back to Excel again.
Since you probably don't want to hear about my troubles with Excel, I'll leave out the details of how I failed to get it to work. Anyway, here's a graph that you can ignore.
You can ignore this text too. Nobody reads italicized text anyway
If you look at the graph, you can see that there are two power ranks where more than one out of fifty viewers posted a comment. Using my contrived reasoning, this means that they were the two most controversial power ranks. The first one is this power rank, where FakeSteve put Manifesto7 at number 10 instead of Stork. I can only assume it was controversial because Mani's fans wanted him to be higher. The most controversial power rank overall was this one. In fact, it's probably even more 'controversial' by now, because I copied down the data like an hour ago, and more people have posted in it since then.
So after making that graph, I carefully thought about it (checked the blog section again for anything interesting), and decided that it was a pretty worthless statistic, at least the way it was presented. But I put in this post anyway, just because I wanted to waste your time anyway. Anyway, I decided that a slightly less shitty statistic would be the average controversiness per power rank author. This required more work with excel.
Putting on Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" for mood music, I set out to conquer excel. For maximum effect, sing this out loud while reading the sentence after this one: Dah da da daaaah dah da da daaaaaaah dah da da DAAAAAAAAH DAH DA DA DAAAAAAAAH. Using Excel, I averaged the data and made a graph. Behold:
Feel free to continue singing.
This graph clearly shows that contrary to popular opinion, FakeSteve is actually not in the least bit divisive when writing power ranks. Even DeadVessel can write a more entertaining* power rank, and he can't even win a showmatch against gosugamers. At least we stripped him of his blue newswriter status. As soon as we finish altering certain records, it will appear that he never existed. And as we can see from the graph, none other than OneOther (I probably saw this pun somewhere else, because I'm not creative enough to come up with it myself) is the best at fostering controversy. And DJEtter obviously sucks. He may have invented the power rank in the first place and brought it to what is today, but nobody cares.
I contacted Savior and asked him what he thought about FakeSteve's power ranks. At least I think that's what I said. If you get picky about details, like 'words' and 'grammar', I don't technically speak korean. But this is probably related to power ranks.
Okay, so maybe I'm not quite sure if Savior is thumbing down DeadVessel's showmatch performance or FakeSteve's power ranks or if he's sentencing a gladiator to death. Wait, nevermind. Only Boxer can do that last one, because he's the emperor. Gladiators and DeadVessel's miserable failure aside, there are other interesting statistics that you can fake from the power ranks.
At the suggestion of IntoTheWow, (who probably makes shitty power ranks), I checked how the number of protoss on the power rank compared to how many comments. Because as we know, every comment on the power rank is a protoss tear.
1a2a3a says T_T
As we can see, this graph is very linear. In fact, it's so linear that there are three vertical lines. This means that it's not just normally linear, but it's triple linear. Yes, this means that protoss players cry so much that they have redefined mathematics as we know it. However, in the interest of preserving my knowledge of mathematics, I am forced to change the subject. So with no apparent reason, I'll throw another graph with numbers and stuff. This one will be about the average number of views of each person's power rank. Popularity contest, go!
If you're still singing at this point, good job. You can stop now.
As we can see, FakeSteve and OneOther have the most popular power ranks. Again, DJEtter is behind the others, and is left hoping that the cooler group of starcraft newswriters won't beat him up and steal his lunch money. An interesting coincidence is that the two most popular power rank writers also share the distinction of failing to get the first post in their own power rank for the Close but no cigar (CBNC) post. However, after his first CBNC failure, Fakesteve improved his APM and mechanics enough to get the first post. OneOther is sitting at a low of 0% of first posts succeeded. I bet he plays protoss.
With the numbers backing me up, I can conclusively say (i.e. not prove) that OneOther is better at power ranks than anyone else. Ever. But we are left wondering if there could be another PR writer. A PR writer faster, stronger than any that came before. Again, I delved deep into the depths of Excel, making mathematical magic materialize. Remember that cheesy statistic, the number of posts divided by the number of views? If you had read carefully, you'll know that I manufactured a flimsy reason why it could possibly mean how controversial a post was. After hours of careful calculations, I came up with the most controversial power rank poster possible, and graphed it in comparison to the current PR posters:
The projected maximum possible ratio of posts to page views is the bar in red.
I was searching for a power rank writer faster and stronger than any that came before. There is only one possibility: iNcontroL posing as IdrA. And stop singing Ride of the Valkyries now, it's creeping me out.
Special thanks to IntoTheWow for editing, help with Excel and pictures