PLAY PODCASTS
Simpsons Data Science with Todd Schneider
Episode 389

Simpsons Data Science with Todd Schneider

Software Engineering Daily · softwareengineeringdaily.com

October 18, 20161h 3m

Audio is streamed directly from the publisher (traffic.megaphone.fm) as published in their RSS feed. Play Podcasts does not host this file. Rights-holders can request removal through the copyright & takedown page.

Show Notes

The Simpsons is a classic, beloved television show. The scripts of The Simpsons have been made publicly available, and include dialogue, location, and character information. Todd Schneider used these scripts and other information sources as a corpus to analyze The Simpsons and find interesting statistics–such as who the most important supporting characters were, and how the ratings of the show have trended over time relative to other TV shows that have declined in ratings.

Todd works at Genius in New York, and I took the opportunity to ask him other questions about pop culture, given that Genius is a place where pop culture and data collide. If you haven’t seen the site, it started out as a wiki for rap music, and quickly grew to more aspects of pop culture.

Todd also has a variety of other side projects, involving betting markets, analysis of taxis vs Lyft and Uber, and a systematic study of the wedding section of the New York Times.