Strong Bad Email Statistics

From Homestar Runner Wiki

Current revision as of 05:13, 29 December 2023

No Loafing!

Over 200 Strong Bad Emails have been released on homestarrunner.com. This article is intended to track statistics reflecting relative use of computers and the runtime of emails. Charts and graphs have been created to visualize and analyze Strong Bad and his emails.

[edit] Strong Bad Email Runtime

These data are as of parenting and the December 16, 2022 revision of Strong Bad Email By Length.

A scatter plot of chronological number vs. runtime

A scatter plot of chronological number vs. length, with outliers removed.

The scatter plot to the left illustrates the relationship between the email number and its corresponding runtime (the red plots for the primary runtime, and the black plots including the Easter eggs). This can be mathematically modeled using a power regression curve, which allows us to measure the trend for email duration as well as predict the ongoing trend for future emails. The R² value for these curves identifies how strong this relationship is (how close the points are to the model): a value of 1 means that the model and the data are identical, while a 0 means that the model does not relate to the data at all.

The equation for the black curve is y = 21.079x^0.4833 and the equation for the red curve is y = 20.652x^0.4688, where x is the email's number and y is the runtime in seconds. There are certain emails — vacation, flashback, alternate universe, retirement, and parenting — that ran for much longer than the emails surrounding them, termed outliers. These outliers affect the accuracy of the model and, if removed, allow for greater precision. The graph on the right has removed the outliers, which subsequently improves the R² value for the curves. The black curve's equation becomes y = 21.18x^0.4801 and the red equation becomes y = 20.698x^0.4664. This improved model gives us, for instance, an estimate that email 500 would run six minutes and fifteen seconds (6:59 with Easter eggs); of course, it should be noted that these models are by no means a guarantee.

In the email theme song, Strong Bad tells his viewers that each email is about 3 to 5 minutes long. Approximately half of all emails fall within this range; however, this length did not become the standard until the late Compy era.

[edit] Strong Bad Emails by Computer

These data are as of parenting and the December 16, 2022 revision of Strong Bad Email By Length.

This section refers to the computer eras — the Tandy 400 (1-40), Compy 386 (41-118), Lappy 486 (119-201), Corpy NT6 (202), Compé (203-205), and Lappier (206-209). DVD exclusive emails are included — two Tandy emails, two Compy emails, and three Lappy emails. For the purposes of this data, each cartoon is counted as a single "email" regardless of how many emails the characters read or write during it.

Average runtime of email toons by computer era

Total runtime of email toons by computer era

Number of email toons per computer era

[edit] Remarks

• The Lappy 486 was the most-used computer.
  • A total of 86 emails were in the Lappy era, the most of any computer.
  • Emails in the Lappy era make up over half of all total sbemail runtime, regardless of whether Easter eggs are counted or not.
  • Given the current pace of updates, it is unlikely the Lappy will be surpassed in either category.
• The Compé was the first (and so far only) of Strong Bad's primary home computers to not surpass its predecessor in either volume or runtime of emails answered.
  • The Lappier has already surpassed the Compé in both categories.

[edit] Strong Bad Emails featuring more than one email

Several Strong Bad Emails feature more than one email.

• credit card — After checking his email, Strong Bad sends an email to, and gets a reply from, Homestar Runner.
• spring cleaning — Strong Bad checks five emails and promptly deletes each one.
• E-mail Birds — Strong Bad answers three emails on the Tandy.
• sisters — Strong Bad accidentally deletes the first email he gets and later receives a poorly written one.
• 50 emails — Strong Bad checks two emails (and begins to check another before Homestar Runner arrives and "answers" another two).
• huttah! — The first five emails Strong Bad checks all show particular interest in The Cheat (he deletes most of them). The last two are all directed to Strong Bad, but he attempts to fool The Cheat into thinking they're for him.
• fingers — Apart from the main email, Strong Bad also checks four emails asking him how he types with boxing gloves on.
• personal favorites — In addition to the main email, Strong Bad mentions ten emails in fake flashbacks (eight in the main toon, two in Easter eggs).
• 2 emails — Jimmy suggests Strong Bad check two emails a week and he does. He can also be seen checking a third email during the fast-forwarding.
• lunch special — After checking his email, Strong Bad receives another one from Strong Mad.
• cheatday — After Strong Bad checks his email, he lets The Cheat check another three emails.
• other days — In addition to the main email, Strong Bad answers a Polish email (and a snail mail).
• dreamail — Strong Bad makes up an additional email and answers it.
• do over — Strong Bad re-answers two old emails.
• bottom 10 — Strong Bad receives an email with large numbers of "Fwd:" and "Re:" in the subject line, as an example of #8 on his bottom 10.
• lady...ing — Strong Bad remembers an older email.
• theme song — Strong Bad can be seen answering an email in one of the theme song montages.
• retirement — Strong Bad answers an email on each of his first two computers.
• the chair — Strong Bad answers a second email, but his new chair obstructs almost the entire screen of the Lappy while he does so.
• being mean — Strong Bad checks three emails from Nice Dad.
• email thunder — Strong Bad checks an email addressed to Homestar, then later sends another email to Homestar.
• sbemail 206 — Strong Bad starts to check his first email on the Lappier at the end, but the viewer doesn't get to see it due to the April Fools' pop-up.

[edit] Intervals between Strong Bad Emails

These data are as of parenting (April 1, 2022).

Frequency of Strong Bad Email updates

Although Strong Bad Emails were released weekly at one point, they have overall been released at widely varying frequencies. The graph to the right visualizes the frequency of a given number of days between email updates. Here is a summary of the data:

• Mean: 35.8 days — only five emails have an interval longer than 71 days; if these outliers are excluded, the mean becomes 13.1 days.
• Median: 7 days
• Mode: 7 days — 89 emails came out 7 days after the previous release. The longest streak of 7-day releases was band names through the bird — eight emails in a row were released seven days after their predecessor.
• Minimum: 1 day — There was 1 day between the releases of retirement parts A and B. The minimum interval between wholly separate emails was 4 days, which happened between brianrietta and i love you and again between ghosts and theme party.
• Maximum: 2004 days — There were over 5 years between the releases of videography and sbemail 206.
  • Prior to the site's hiatus, the longest gap between emails was 280 days, between email thunder and hremail 3184.
  • Before Strong Bad Email was made a regular feature, the longest time between two emails was 71 days between halloweener and brianrietta.
  • The longest span between emails during an active period is 63 days, between the paper and mini-golf.

[edit] Other Information

• In several interviews, the Brothers Chaps have provided rough estimates of the daily volume of emails sent to Strong Bad (often remarking that a significant amount was simply spam):
  • Mid-2001 — Prior to the introduction of Strong Bad Emails, "five or ten mails a day"
  • Early/Mid-2002 — "a few hundred emails a day"
  • January 2003 — "Fifteen a day" when Strong Bad Emails started, "now it's like 500 or more" daily
  • April 2003 — "3000 emails daily"
  • May 2003 — "A couple of weeks ago, it was around 3000 emails a day. It seems like it's recently jumped up again."
  • May 2003 — "over 4000 a day lately"
  • October 2003 — "a ridiculous amount of email, like between 5000-8000 a day."
  • July 2004 — "between two and five thousand a day [...] There was definitely a peak maybe last summer where there was 8000 a day."
  • April/May 2005 — "2000, 3000 a day, something like that."
  • December 2005 — "over 3000 emails a day"

These data are as of parenting (April 1, 2022).

• 47% of all emails have no location given; 5% have no return sender at all.
• The average sbemail runtime is 2:57, or 3:13 if Easter eggs are included.
• The Brothers Chaps most frequently have chosen emails with sender's names starting with J or S. Together these two initials make up 27% of all emails. Census studies regularly place J and S among the most common letters to begin first names in the United States, with J commonly topping the list.

These data are as of trading cards (September 13, 2006).

• The average email is 1.81 sentences long.
• Only 18% of all emails are longer than two sentences. Only two emails (long pants and magic trick) longer than four sentences have ever been used.
• There are eight substantiated claims of Strong Bad answering an email from an HRWiki or HRWiki forum user:
  • montage sent by Porplemontage, addressed as Steve
  • animal sent by Kerrek slaya, addressed as Spud Jr.
  • space program sent by Ryan Sturmer, addressed without last name
  • portrait sent by NachoMan, addressed as Dylan Bragers (aka Coolio da Fabio)
  • cliffhangers sent by Cessna Man!, addressed as Jake
  • underlings sent by PlasticDiverGuy
  • the paper sent by Thewi2kbug, addressed as Kyle Williams
  • slumber party sent by ThomasO, addressed as Thomas O.