Some Good Old Fashioned Number Crunching

Winningest

Imperial and Manchester are the two winningest institutions in University Challenge history.

Whenever I have used 'winningest' in the past I have always done so with an air of the tongue-in-cheek. With the assumption that it wasn't actually a real word, and that it was just something American sports commentators said. But it has just occurred to me that not everyone reading this will be consumers of American sports commentary, so to those people it may be coming across as bizarre at best, or just downright wrong.

However, in the manner of fleek, skibidi toilet and bae, it has entered the conventional and agreed upon lexicon. Language is constantly evolving, and as demonstrated by the wave of ever-cringier TikToks/adverts doing the rounds on Twitter this week, new terms are constantly being coined.

Winningest has been said so many times by so many people that it is undoubtedly an official word now, just like bussin.

But back to Manchester and Imperial.

Let's Crunch Some Numbers

I have finally managed to do some data analysis. This is something I've been saying I was going to do for years, but I've never done it.

Until now.

I thought I'd need to write some proper code for it and (not knowing how to write proper code) have been put off.

What I was forgetting is that most of the time a Pivot table will do.

Pivot tables - the saviour of many a work-spreadsheet (and of my iTunes most played artists data, as I discussed in this month's Patreon post) - have come up clutch once again. (Coming up clutch is another American sports-ism, incidentally).

So I have crunched some numbers on these most winningest of teams, and can share some with you below.

Appearance Data

Imperial have 5 titles to Manchester's 4 (tied with Magdalen, Oxford), but it is the Northern side who have the most appearances in UC history, with 79 compared to Imperial's 59. Data correct up to the start of this series.

4-time winners Magdalen are the most appearingest (okay, this one isn't a real word) Oxbridge college with 1 more appearance than Trinity, Cambridge (themselves 3-time winners).

I initially had Durham 4th, but at the last minute I spotted an oversight - 11 of their appearances had been logged as "Uni of Durham" rather than "Durham Uni". It is very possible that there are more errors like that in the data, so if you spot any mistakes please let me know.

But how many points have each of these institutions scored, I hear you ask. I hear you clamouring for that information, actually - and here it is.

Unsurprisingly, Manchester top this list, with Imperial and Edinburgh switching places in 3rd and 4th. Magdalen rise from 8th to 6th, but there aren't many big changes. St John's, Cam (who make this list along with St John's, Ox) have scored exactly the same number of points as St Andrews and Birkbeck.

So far we have done some counting (to get the number of appearances), and some adding (to get the sum of the points), but we haven't done any real number crunching, which is what I promised.

Number crunching, I'm sure you'll agree, has to involve at the very least one or the other of multiplication or division. I'm going to hit you with some division, and we're going to have a third table, this time showing the average points per game of each team to have appeared on the show.

I have removed institutions with fewer than 10 episodes, because thats the kind of thing you do when you are crunching numbers. I will also note that although some of the teams look like they have the same points per game, when you go to multiple decimal places the order is correct. I could have made this more obvious by adding the decimal places to the table, but I think that would have made it a bit busy.

I don't want to waste all my stats ammo on one post, so let's move onto the episode - could Imperial start closing the appearance gap on Manchester?

If you want to watch the episode beforereading the rest of the post you can do so here.

Here's your first starter for ten.

Sutherland is first out of the gate for Manchester, but unfortunately her guess of moth is wrong. I had guessed butterfly, so was thinking for a second that she may have been quite unlucky, but Spry buzzes correctly with armadillo so she (and I) can't feel too hard done by.

A full set of bonuses on maritime republics (called thalassocracies), which are not to be confused with hydraulic empires (which is a civilisation ruled by a monopoly on the water supply, like in Mad Max: Fury Road), gives Imperial (another word relating to empires) a 30-point lead. This quickly becomes 55 thanks to Salamanca Camacho and a hat-trick on mythology.

Spry buzzes on the next starter and pulls a face like he thinks he's screwed up, but his guess of Kissinger is correct, and it is allowed by Rajan who lightly scolds him for the slight delay in answering. They finally drop a bonus, giving Versailles instead of Paris, and Easow follows this up by dragging Manchester out of the negatives with theravada.

Could this be the turning point in the match?

Spoiler - it was not.

Manchester lost another five points thanks to a precocious buzz, and Elkouby picked it up to reaffirm Imperial's control. Spry's third put the London side into three figures, and they continued their charge from there.

Imperial are looking ominous at this point, which is perhaps unsurprising given their recent pedigree in this competition. Because while they have only won one more title than Manchester, three of their five wins have come in the past five years, while Manchester haven't won for eleven years. And indeed Manchester's semi-final appearance last year was their first at that stage since their 2013 victory.

Which makes Manchester the fallen giant of University Challenge, with Imperial rising to challenge their dynastic run from 2006 to 2013 in which they never failed to make it to at least the semi-finals.

No Mercy

Going into the music round, Imperial hold a lead of 140 points. Manchester's only hope is to squeeze their way into a high-scoring loser spot, but that would be possible only with the help of Imperial, who show no signs of letting up. Spry turns to Salamanca Camacho, clearly the classical music expert of the team, and he buzzes confidently with Rhapsody in Blue to take the starter.

The man from Madrid brings up Imperial's double-century, before Easow wakes Manchester from their slumber with Walt Whitman. It was going to take a huge effort to even break into triple figures from here, but Crossley wasn't going to give up with out a fight, taking their second consecutive starter with Congo.

He comes in early on the next starter, but his gamble doesn't pay off and Spry collects the points for Imperial. He does manage the next starter, but this would prove the end of Manchester's challenge, as Imperial showed no mercy on their way to 300 points (the second triple-century of the series, along with Bristol).

Imperial 310 - 75 Manchester

Its early, but Imperial look like one of the teams to beat again this year (along with their fellow 300-ers Bristol). Manchester can count themselves unlucky to have come up against such a juggernaut. At the very least they managed to add one more appearance to their existing record, which Imperial are coming for.

Join me next week for Reading (19 apps) vs Exeter (24 apps), and subscribe if you haven't already for more excellent data analysis.