So, I was just pursuing the wiki and realized that Matthew Parker has already been in 39 episodes. There seems to be fewer total characters since album 50. There's pros and cons to that - we get to know each character a little better but, there's also less variety. But, then I thought 'well, maybe there's not actually fewer characters - it just seems like there is. There ought to be some way to measure.' So, I came up with 'Character Appearance Density'. C.A.D. = Last Appearance - First Appearance/Total Appearances. (It could also be thought of as the average gap between episodes, within a given characters' run). I'm not really sure what it's useful for
![Anxious :anxious:](./images/smilies/eusa_shifty.gif)
but, it's kind of fun just to think about.
So basically, each of the following characters appeared in every x episodes between their first and last episodes; x being the number next to their name.
- Whit - 1.35
- Connie - 2.02
- Eugene - 2.65
- Wooton - 4.23
- Tom - 4.71
- Bernard - 6.13
- Jack Allen - 5.36
- Jason - 6.43
- Katrina - 9.1
- Joanne - 13.3
- Dale - 14.91
- Bart - 7.18
- George - 7.65 (6.02*)
- Mary - 12.68 (10.44*)
- Jimmy - 8.81 (5.9*)
- Donna - 8.85 (7.1*)
- Lucy - 8.13 (5*)
- Jack Davis - 25.42 (13*)
- Robyn - 15.21 (5.88*)
- Isaac - 21.88 (10.93*)
- Rodney - 9.54
- Mandy - 4.79
- Jared - 10.96 (7.35*)
- Trent - 6.61
- Grady - 4.33
- Harlow - 14.46
- Mitch - 11.41 (3.55*)
- Matthew - 1.72
- Olivia - 3.66
- Camilla - 6.6
- Jay - 3.05
- Emily - 3.2
- Barrett - 5.91
*Excluding retrospective and return-of-an-old-character episodes such as A Look Back, 500, Living in the Gray, The Triangled Web and Something Old, Something New
So, in general it seems the new kid characters tend to appear more often than the older kid characters but, especially Matthew. He appears more frequently, given his episode span, than any character other than Whit. Again, this information is... worth nothing.
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/wink.gif)
But, I thought it was kind of fun to compare different characters and make educated guesses as to which characters would be higher and lower as I was compiling the list.
![Dancing \:D/](./images/smilies/eusa_dance.gif)