A Comparative Statistical Analysis of Stand‑up Comedians

Author: Krishi Pandey

Introduction:

Stand‑up comedy has become one of the most influential forms of entertainment in India. Comedians are evaluated not only by their jokes but also by stage presence, audience engagement, content originality, and consistency of performance. With the rise of digital platforms and live shows, fan perception plays a major role in determining the popularity of comedians. This study evaluates the ratings of selected Indian stand‑up comedians to understand whether there are significant differences in audience perception of their performances.

Objective:

To analyze the ratings of stand‑up comedians using One‑Way ANOVA in order to determine whether significant differences exist among them.

Literature Review:

Performance Evaluation in Entertainment Industry
Sharma (2018) discusses how audience engagement, originality, and delivery style play a significant role in determining the success of stand‑up comedians. The study highlights that audience perception and crowd response are key indicators of performance quality in live entertainment industries.

Statistical Methods for Comparative Analysis
Gupta and Mehta (2021) explain that statistical tools such as ANOVA are commonly used to compare performance ratings among multiple subjects. In entertainment analytics, ANOVA helps identify whether differences in ratings between performers are statistically significant or simply due to random variation.

Data Collection:

The data for this study was collected using primary research methods via a structured survey distributed through Google Forms. A total of 50 responses were recorded. Participants were asked to rate the comedians—Samay Raina, Zakir Khan, Anubhav Singh Bassi, and Ravi Gupta—on a scale of 1 to 10 based on their overall performance, content quality, and audience engagement. A One‑Way ANOVA was then calculated using the collected data.

Data Analysis:

Groups	Count	Sum	Average	Variance
Samay Raina	50	389	7.78	5.113878
Zakir Khan	50	349	6.98	6.632245
Anubhav Singh Bassi	50	333	6.66	5.535102
Ravi Gupta	50	330	6.60	6.326531

ANOVA

Source of Variation	SS	df	MS	F	P-value
Between Groups	44.215	3	14.738	2.497202	0.060977
Within Groups	1156.78	196	5.902
Total	1200.995	199

H0: Samay Raina = Zakir Khan = Anubhav Singh Bassi = Ravi Gupta

H1: At least one comedian’s rating is different.

Conclusion:

As calculated, F (2.497202) is less than F crit (2.650677). Therefore, we accept the null hypothesis (H0). This indicates that there is no statistically significant difference in the audience ratings of the selected comedians. While minor variations exist in the mean ratings, these differences are not strong enough to conclude that one comedian performs significantly better than the others based on the collected sample data.

References:

Gupta, R., & Mehta, S. (2021). Statistical techniques for comparative performance analysis. Journal of Applied Statistics and Research, 9(2), 45–53.

Sharma, A. (2018). Audience engagement and performance evaluation in live entertainment. International Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 6(1), 21–29.