A Visual Exploration

by Cuthbert Chow

Who is the Smartest Person in The Office?

Ever wondered who the smartest character on "The Office" is? Oscar Martinez was once widely regarded as the smartest person in the office, that is, until his position was 'uslurped' by none other than Michael Scott. Michael Scott had bested Oscar by demonstrating his wide ranging knowledge of current affairs and the rising urbanisation in China.

Despite the heated debate which ensued between the two great minds, the title of 'smartest in The Office' remained up for grabs. I decided to settle this debate once and for all, by conducting a lexical analysis of all the times the characters spoke on camera, and assessing the intellectual level of their speech, using the Flesch-Kincaid grade level test. The test roughly equates the complexity of their speech to an academic 'grade-level', and will give us a rough indication as to who speaks with the greatest intellect.

Based on this analysis, it seems that David Wallace is in fact the smartest character on The Office. This is not surprising, considering after all that this is the man who founded 'Suck It', and led Dunder Mifflin to some of their most profitable quarters

Unfortunately, it seems that Darryl is at the very bottom of this list. I found this quite surprising considering that this is the man who brought to us phrases such as 'Dinkin' flicka' and 'going mach five', not to mention the inspirational 'pippity poppity, give me the zoppity'.

At least one thing is for sure: Michael is DEFINITELY smarter than Oscar. Suck it, Oscar.

Who is the Most Positive in the Office?

Now we know who the smartest in The Office is. But who brings the most positive energy to the team? We know Michael would probably again consider himself worthy of this title, but would he be correct? To answer this question, I did a similar analysis, but this time using a pre-trained language model to build a sentiment classifier, and then used this classifier on all the dialog from each character in the show.





Glancing at the data, it seems the classifier did a pretty accurate job. Michael, with his botched attempts at humour, and Jim, with his incessant witty quips, occupy spots near the tail of the chart. Stanley, the reticent grump, and Angela, the pious accountant, score the very lowest sentiment scores. At the other, positive end, we have David Wallace, which is again unsurprising. You must be a pretty cheerful person to be able to deal with Michael Scott on a daily basis.

What I find particularly interesting is seeing the progression of characters throughout the seasons. Roy had the most dramatic change, starting with the lowest overall score in season 1, and ending up with one of the highest scores in season 9. I guess breaking up with Pam was a good move for him as well. It's also nice to see Angela mellow out a little towards the end of the show, with her best years coming at the very end.

Who on "The Office" Spends the Most Time Talking?

Note that the colours in this chart correspond to the number of words spoken. A green colour indicates more words, and red indicates fewer, with blue lying in between. Throughout the show, it's quite clear that Michael Scott has the most to say. Unsurprising, given his position as regional manager. When he leaves, Andy picks up some of the slack, both as new regional manager, and new leader of words spoken per season. Also of note is Robert California's brief but loquacious stint on the show, as well as Erin's gradual ascendance as one of the main cast.

Explore the Data Yourself

If all of these charts are making your mind go a mile an hour, I've created a tool to let you explore the lines by yourself. Every bubble is an individual spoken line, and each row of bubbles is one episode. The bubbles are also colour coded based on the sentiment score of its contents, and more details can be seen by hovering over the bubbles. You can also scroll inside the box to zoom, and drag with your mouse to pan. If you ever get lost, just hit the reset button, or refresh the page!

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Conclusion

I hope you had as much fun looking through these charts as I did making them, and that it made your heart soar with the eagle's nest! If you want to look at the raw data, or read about how I made this visualisation, check the links at the top of the page!