Follow Up: Debate 1 Analysis

A few days ago, I posted some approximate statistics and some factual generalizations about the first presidential debate. After receiving some feedback on the reliability of my statistics, I decided to improve the experiment and do it again. (Original post here)

So, I programmed a debate tracking tool. Although the tool is still in its infancy (and quite buggy), it works. It allows me to generate verifiable statistics regarding any debate. I now have a set of verifiable statistics to back up some of my original statistics.

Verifiable debate 1 statistics

In fact, I am so happy with how the tracker works, I will be repeating this exact experiment once again to guarantee accuracy. I encourage you to do it as well! Watch the same YouTube video that I did and track the same statistics. Please!

To wrap it up, this experiment verified the following generalizations:

• McCain talked about his own record about twice as much as Obama talked about his own record.
  
  
• McCain talked about Obama's record more than Obama talked about McCain's record.
  
  
• Obama mentioned George Bush seven times more than John McCain did.
  
  
• McCain talked more about his own record than he did Obama's record. Obama talked more about McCain's record than he did his own record.

Again, I will be re-verifying these same three statistics using my tracker. You may think I'm obsessive. You're right. I am obsessed because it makes me very, very mad when people blame fact on inaccurate statistics. It makes me mad, for example, when people tell me that I am not right about Obama focusing on Bush and blathering more than John McCain rather than making actual references. The only 'proof' that they have is that I am not an objective observer, so my statistics must be made up.

In your face.