The Big Lebowski – fuckistics

The real count of F-words

Note: This isn't an academic essay – it's just a public summary; I don't have the revisited version and I'm too lazy for the exact translation.

Introduction

Okay, here it comes. We got a statistics assignment for math-seminar and I chose a quite controversial topic – counting F-words in the movie “The Big Lebowski”. It's my favorite movie from the Coens and I know it placed at the top of those “F-words charts”.  I found it more interesting than “counting pedestrians” which was suggested by our teacher and I didn't mean it like a rag (just a little bit; “fuck” doesn't mean anything in my language and my math-teacher doesn't speak English very well – however she might have used a dictionary, I suppose), because I really wanted to answer this pragmatic question: “Who is swearing more? The Dude, or Walter?”
I counted “fuck” and its derivations (for those, including my math-teacher, who don't know what the word derivation means, I give some examples: fucker, fucked, fucking, motherfucker, unfuckingbeliavable etc.) for all characters in five groups in every minute of the movie (let's say 117 minutes): overall, the Dude, Walter, Donny and other characters (Treehorn thugs, the “Jesus”, nihilists, the Big Lebowski, Smokey, Larry's neighbour, Malibu Police Chief, cab driver, Da Fino).

Results

Yeah and now “the table”! It’s totally invalid, but... I’m too lazy to edit it.

minute overall Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski Walter Sobchak Donny Other characters
1 0 0 0 0 0
2 0 0 0 0 0
3 2 0 0 0 2
4 4 1 0 0 3
5 1 0 0 0 1
6 0 0 0 0 0
7 3 1 1 1 0
8 8 4 4 0 0
9 5 3 2 0 0
10 0 0 0 0 0
11 0 0 0 0 0
12 0 0 0 0 0
13 2 1 0 0 1
14 0 0 0 0 0
15 2 2 0 0 0
16 13 7 6 0 0
17 3 0 1 0 2
18 2 1 1 0 0
19 0 0 0 0 0
20 0 0 0 0 0
21 0 0 0 0 0
22 1 1 0 0 0
23 0 0 0 0 0
24 0 0 0 0 0
25 2 1 1 0 0
26 8 0 7 1 0
27 6 0 2 0 4
28 0 0 0 0 0
29 0 0 0 0 0
30 1 1 0 0 0
31 4 3 1 0 0
32 13 5 7 0 1
33 5 5 0 0 0
34 6 5 1 0 0
35 1 0 1 0 0
36 6 3 3 0 0
37 8 3 5 0 0
38 7 2 5 0 0
39 0 0 0 0 0
40 0 0 0 0 0
41 0 0 0 0 0
42 0 0 0 0 0
43 0 0 0 0 0
44 0 0 0 0 0
45 0 0 0 0 0
46 4 4 0 0 0
47 2 1 0 0 1
48 0 0 0 0 0
49 0 0 0 0 0
50 2 1 1 0 0
51 2 0 2 0 0
52 1 1 0 0 0
53 0 0 0 0 0
54 1 1 0 0 0
55 4 1 3 0 0
56 8 7 1 0 0
57 0 0 0 0 0
58 1 1 0 0 0
59 1 1 0 0 0
60 1 1 0 0 0
61 1 1 0 0 0
62 0 0 0 0 0
63 0 0 0 0 0
64 1 0 1 0 0
65 9 3 6 0 0
66 1 1 0 0 0
67 0 0 0 0 0
68 6 4 2 0 0
69 8 0 3 0 5
70 4 0 0 0 4
71 2 2 0 0 0
72 0 0 0 0 0
73 0 0 0 0 0
74 0 0 0 0 0
75 1 1 0 0 0
76 0 0 0 0 0
77 0 0 0 0 0
78 0 0 0 0 0
79 0 0 0 0 0
80 0 0 0 0 0
81 1 1 0 0 0
82 7 2 0 0 5
83 0 0 0 0 0
84 0 0 0 0 0
85 1 1 0 0 0
86 2 2 0 0 0
87 1 1 0 0 0
88 10 10 0 0 0
89 6 5 0 0 1
90 3 2 0 0 1
91 4 4 0 0 0
92 10 6 4 0 0
93 5 3 2 0 0
94 6 1 5 0 0
95 3 0 3 0 0
96 5 0 1 0 4
97 8 2 5 0 1
98 11 0 1 0 10
99 8 1 0 0 7
100 0 0 0 0 0
101 0 0 0 0 0
102 0 0 0 0 0
103 1 1 0 0 0
104 6 5 1 0 0
105 0 0 0 0 0
106 0 0 0 0 0
107 0 0 0 0 0
108 0 0 0 0 0
109 0 0 0 0 0
110 0 0 0 0 0
111 0 0 0 0 0
112 0 0 0 0 0
113 0 0 0 0 0
114 0 0 0 0 0
115 0 0 0 0 0
116 0 0 0 0 0
117 0 0 0 0 0
sum 271 127 89 2 53

Here are some inelegant Excel-like graphs. Man, I’ve got better things (bowling, driving around, and the occasional acid flashback) to do than generating pretty cool SVGs...


The Dude's minute record is in the 88th minute - he says it 10 times (call it modus or whatever you want).
The harmonic mean could be interesting here, let's call it “fuckency”:
Overall fuckency: 271 / 117 = 2.32 fucks per minute
The Dude's fuckency: 1.09 fuck per minute
Walter's fuckency: 0.76 fuck per minute

Then, we can compare the overall result with other sources. I wrote a simple script which just counts F-strings in text files (I could write something more complex, but who cares) and took the English subtitles and the script – the subtitles contain 266 F-strings and the script gets 281. The same number of 281 F-words was claimed by the Coens in one interview. FMG (familymediaguide.com) says 260.
The arithmetic mean of this (260, 266, 271, 281, 281) is: 271.8
So, the absolute deviation of my overall result is only 0.8.
The average absolute deviation is: 7.36
The range is: 21
The variance is: 68.56
The standard deviation is: 8.28
The coefficient of variation is: 3.05%

Conclusion

This “research” reveals many fascinating facts. The “fuck” in various forms is said 271 times during the whole movie and it matches the average count. From this, 127 F-words are uttered by the Dude (so that means he's the number one swearer) and 87 cuss words go to Walter. However, Walter's number is respectable if you consider he appears less in the movie when compared to the Dude.
Anyway, both of them say more cuss words than anybody else in the movie and their share of cuss words is almost 80%. Per minute, you can hear “fuck” more than 2 times on average and one of them is said by the Dude.

Reactions

First off, I got a D and after my revision, I was given a C. And now, finally, some quotations of my teacher's comments:
“That must be a very 'clever' movie!”
“Are there any other words except of this one?”
“I’m confused and sick of this work.”
“I read it at least 20 times and still don't get it – how could anyone possibly say it 10 times in a minute?!”
The answer to my question how I could change it (it fulfilled every condition of the assignment) to get a better mark: “Um... Well... I don't know, maybe... A little bit of change of your topic might help you. Do you think it is possible till this Thursday?”

And from one local message board:
- “Write it down and you’ll get the Nobel Prize in Literature!”
- “Academy Special Achievement Award, more likely.”

“It’s irrelevant... blah blah blah.” - Yeah well, that’s just, y’know, like, your opinion, man. Send email to: dudestats[-at-]hackthesound.com

Ahh fuck it, let's go bowling.