All right, I finally got the Overall Top 20 character list finished! I've calculated the frequencies, and the results are in.
1. Littlefoot
2. Ducky
3. Chomper
4. Petrie
3. Cera
6. Ali
7. Guido
8. Spike
9. Pterano
10. Sharptooth (original)
If you're curious as to how I calculated these, I'll explain my process below:
I went through each poll individually. To the character who was #1 on the list I assigned 10 points and one tally mark. To the charater who was #2 on the list, I assigned 9 points and one tally mark. To the character who was #3, I assigned eight points and one tally mark, and so on. I completed this for every slot on every poll. Once I was done, each charcter now had two things: an overall point value, and also the number of Top 10 lists the character appeared on.
The characters with the most points made the list.
To show you how your favorite characters measured up, I'm also going to post the ranking of every character who appeared in any Top 10 list. However, this caused things o get a bit stickier, especially with the more obscure characters who all scred beween 1-6 points. I needed to add more criteria.
I then rated the characters as such:
1) The characters with the highest point value will appear higher on the list.
2)In case of a tie in point values, characters who appeared on more Top 10 lists will appear higher on the list.
3)In case of a tie in list appearances, characters with the individual highest placing on a Top 10 list will appear higher on the list.
4)In case of a tie in list location, characters who appeared in less movies or had less screen time will appear higher on the list.
I also had problems with some individual top 10 lists:
-Original characters:Since nobody except an OC's creator would ever vote for an Orignal Character, I chose to skip any OC's on a list and give no character any points for that space. For example, if part of a list read: "...5)Littlefoot 6)my OC Joebob 7)Ducky..." then Littlefoot would recieve 6 points, Joebob would recive 0 points, and Ducky would receive 4 points.
-Ptyra posting twice:Halfway down the second page of the thread, I found Ptyra mentioning that she "kinda lied" on her orignal list, and posted a new one. Not wanting to go back into my notes and try to find and erase which data points came from her first list, I merely included both as stand-alone lists. Yes, that means Ptyra got twice as many votes as you did. Deal with it.
-Dash the Longneck posting his list in "no particular order":this casued an intresting conundrum, not knowing how to score the ten characters since there is no hierarchy. I finally decided to give 5 points to every character on his list and move on.
-mcr mad's #9 being "everyone else":Well, that would be intresting. I didn't know if I should give 2 points to every character in the history of Land Before Time, knowing that would kinda screw up the curve a little bit, not to mention make a rather large list. After much thought, I abandoned it altogether. mcr mad's list was only 8 charater's long.
Using this formula, I placed the characters in their proper list, and found the popularity of all characters.
In case you're curious, here are every character's stats along with their point value and #of lists appearing on:
1. Littlefoot - 164 pts, 22 lists
2. Ducky - 158 pts, 23 lists
3. Chomper - 118 pts, 18 lists
4. Petrie - 116 pts, 20 lists
3. Cera - 91 pts, 16 lists
6. Ali - 79 pts, 13 lists
7. Guido - 76 pts, 13 lists
8. Spike - 63 pts, 15 lists
9. Pterano - 48 pts, 10 lists
10.Sharptooth - 45 pts, 8 lists
11.Littlefoot's mom - 43 pts, 8 lists
12.Mo - 40 pts, 9 lists
13.Ruby - 33 pts, 6 lists
14.Tricia - 31 pts, 5 lists
15.Grandpa Longneck 29 pts, 8 lists
16.Bron - 25 pts, 10 lists
17.Rainbow faces - 20 pts, 3 lists
18.Doc - 16 pts, 2 lists
19.Tippy - 12 pts, 3 lists
20.Mr. Thicknose - 10 pts, 3 lists
21.Sierra - 9 pts, 1 list
22.sailbacked lizard- 9 pts, 1 list
23.ducky's mom - 8 pts, 3 lists
24.Swooper - 8 pts, 1 list
25.Rinkus - 8 pts, 1 list
26.Shorty - 7 pts, 3 lists
27.Tickles - 7 pts, 1 list
28.Skitter - 6 pts, 2 lists
29.Sharptooth (LBT 3) 6 pts, 1 list
30.Ozzy - 6 pts, 1 list
31.Rooter - 5 pts, 1 list
32.Strut - 5 pts, 1 list
33.Allosaurus (LBT 6) 4 pts, 1 list
34.Tria - 4 pts, 1 list
35.Brachiosaurus (6) 3 pts, 1 list
36.Archie - 3 pts, 1 list
37.Dill - 3 pts, 1 list
38.Sue - 3 pts, 1 list
39.Mr. Clubtail - 2 pts, 2 lists
40.Hyp - 1 pt, 1 list
41.Loofah - 1 pt, 1 list
42.Thud - 1 pt, 1 list
43.Mr. Threehorn 1 pt, 1 list
44."Everyone else" 0 pts, 1 list
By the way, to help me figure out how to make the most accurate Top ten list, I asked the Wikipedia Reference Desk for help. Here's a link to the discussion:
Wikipedia:Top Ten List