What's the average life expectancy of a Keen comic?

JeremyW · Post by **JeremyW** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 4:14 am

I'd be Keen to know.

Dutch! · Post by **Dutch!** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 4:58 am

Keep up the bad jokes like that and I'd be looking at three updates...

Your average Keenspace comic seems to be about geeks/roomates/teenagers being sarcastic wherever possible, and when not, they are furry teenagers or beating each other up with swords and so forth...

Life expectancy? Hopefully not too long...there's heaps of them anyway...

Cope · Post by **Cope** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 5:11 am

I think the average would probably be disturbingly close to zero updates.

TheSuburbanLetdown · Post by **TheSuburbanLetdown** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 5:24 am

exactly 7 days after you open the carton.

McDuffies · Post by **McDuffies** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 5:46 am

Col · Post by **Col** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 6:20 am

It's well past before you even open it.

War · Post by **War** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 6:45 am

I'm sure I remember Kisai mentioning she'd averaged the comics on keenspace, to a single figure number.

Terotrous · Post by **Terotrous** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 6:53 am

And that single figure number is highly skewed by some people like Warren who have over 1000 comics.

The median is almost unquestionably 1.

Dr Legostar · Post by **Dr Legostar** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 7:25 am

But what's the mode? And the standard deviation? and for the love of god someone get me out of that damn statistics class!!!!!

On a side note, standard deviation is a good phrase to describe keenspace... but I digress. (again)

Kris X · Post by **Kris X** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 7:41 am

Depends if the artist gets distracted... I've noticed though that the longer you don't update the less chance you will ever update again.

Warren · Post by **Warren** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 7:56 am

Pretty much if they take a month off for a "broken scanner" they will never, ever return.

McDuffies · Post by **McDuffies** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 8:02 am

Terotrous wrote:And that single figure number is highly skewed by some people like Warren who have over 1000 comics.

I'm close, hehehe, close...

Telecoda · Post by **Telecoda** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 8:21 am

You guys are filling me with confidence here I am almost approaching the median...

Toxic · Post by **Toxic** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 9:10 am

Lemme run through some average lifespans:

Person who thinks keenspace is place to store warez and MP3s: 0 updates
Person who signed up for a keen account for fun: 1, maybe two updates
Average spacer: Maybe a month, if lucky
College student with nothing better to do: 1-2 years
College graduate with nothing better to do: 3-4 years
Semi-serious cartoonist: 3 years
Dillusional person who believes there's actually good money in webcartooning: Possibly unlimited

Rkolter · Post by **Rkolter** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 10:10 am

legostargalactica wrote:But what's the mode? And the standard deviation? and for the love of god someone get me out of that damn statistics class!!!!!

On a side note, standard deviation is a good phrase to describe keenspace... but I digress. (again)

Well, to get the standard deviation, you need to know the mean. Then just take the number of strips for every comic, sum up the squares of the mean minus each comic's strip, and divide by the number of comics on Keenspace. Then get the square root of that.

If you truely want to know, you could look through the keenspace guide, punch the numbers into an excel spreadsheet, and then calculate the rest...

Actually, that sounds kind of fun.

Stinkywigfiddle · Post by **Stinkywigfiddle** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 10:18 am

My first comic lasted about two years and my current commic is still going after three years.
Not that that helps at all.

Faub · Post by **Faub** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 10:25 am

The only things you really need to figure this out are a calculator and the guide. It would also be interesting to see how many comics Keenspace has compared to those that update, how many updates the most popular comics have and what their genres are.

Kevin Wolf · Post by **Kevin Wolf** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 10:31 am

"Mythocorp" started on Sept. 7, 2001, and barring an act of God ended on Nov. 22, 2004, just about three years, which puts me in the semi-serious category.

However, if you factor in sporadic updates, filler, and the two or three times I quit the thing for months on end...factoring in a standard M-W-F update schedule, it's only about a year and a half. Wow...I spent half of the time I was drawing "Mythocorp" slacking off an/or quitting.

Sad.

Spriteville, USA · Post by **Spriteville, USA** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 10:49 am

Sprite Comics are often exempt from the timeline.

No matter how bad a sprite comic is it can live one for years. In fact many sprite comics can last at least 50.

Course all 50 suck and are graphically ugly, and they live because it takes so little effort to make a normal sprite comic, but still.

Bob and George is still alive, only lord knows why but it is.

Rkolter · Post by **Rkolter** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 10:56 am

Statistics of First 150 Comics in Guide List for 3-7-2005

Note that the first 150 comics are also the top viewed comics, which often means the comic has been highly viewed. However, the top 150 comics are also successful comics, so ignore or accept the data at your leisure:

Total Comics in sample: 150
Total strips in sample: 43,197

Mean: 287.98
Median: 255
Modes: 70, 131, 189

Standard Deviation: 212.11