In case you missed Episode 3 of Series 21 of UK Taskmaster, and also summarised from Figures 3 and 4:

• Amy won her 2nd episode in the series.
  • She also had her best episode yet, scoring an impressive 22 points.
• Kumail continues his improving streak, accumulating 19 points and coming in 2nd.
  • This was also Kumail’s best episode to date! He’s slowly muscling his way into being a serious contender for this series.
• Armando and Joel both had good episodes, lying in the upper half of their respective interquartile ranges (the 2nd quantile).
  • Armando managed to take a slight lead, finishing in 3rd place with 13 points.
  • Joel earned 12 points, finishing in joint 4th place. Joint with whom?
• Joanna shared 4th place with Joel.
  • Joanna continues her declining performance streak, accumulating her worst episode score to date (12 points).
  • The decline between episodes has also increased over time (3 and 7 points respectively) which shows quite the downfall of Joanna from her initial high.

It is my opinion that Joanna talked her way out of getting more points for her prize task contribution (“sherry in a fish shaped hip flask” task).

Joanna can certainly talk for Wales, and this was the type of behaviour I was expecting from Joanna going into this series; unnecessarily rambling but entertaining speeches. The recently released Series 21 Outtakes Part 1, shows that this bit went on for much longer (around the 9:20 mark). Her additional, often tangential and surplus details, introduces additional questions from other contestants which adds to the humour.

However, you can clearly see that Greg is initially bought into the prize when she first announces it, and then is exhausted by the end of the ramble.

Other observations from the task distributions table (Figure 4) :

• Amy is so far the only contestant who has yet to be awarded 1 point for a task.
• Joanna is the only contestant yet to receive 0 points for a task.
• So far, no negative or additional bonus points (6 points or more), have been awarded to any contestant by the Taskmaster.
• The colour based earworm that was first featured in the Series 21 trailer finally made sense; it was the descending order of the bricks in the top half of the tower.
  • Something tells me that this is not going to be the last time that we see, or hear, this colour based earworm, particularly since the lower half of the tower earworm hasn’t been tormented subjected onto us yet.

There was a moment in the “alphabet ascension” task, that I thought Amy might end her track record of performing well in tasks. It took her a while (a few words and steps), to grasp the task fully; but she did grasp it in the end.

Joanna on the other hand, humourously still doesn’t get the task, as revealed in the official Taskmaster podcast (around the 35:00 mark).

She was probably too distracted by her own reciting of the task in the echoey room at Hampton Court Palace¹, but she still struggled to understand how the tasks works, even many months after filming the task itself and the studio section.

She struggles to understand how the discarded letters affect your choice in words later on, and why discarding vowels at the start of the staircase is not the best strategy. An A-level in English Literature, whilst a commendable qualification, doesn’t necessary mean one has an extensive vocabulary or is good at word play; an English Language or Linguistics qualification would have been more beneficial for this task.

And things have turned interesting following Episode 3. From our Series Tracker in Figure 6, we can see that:

• We have a new leader! Amy has overtaken Joanna and soared into 1st place with 58 points.
• However, Amy can’t rest too much on her laurels, Joanna is behind her in 2nd place with 53 points.
  • Amy’s 5 points lead could easily be lost if she has a less than stellar episode, and Joanna returns to her former triumphs as exhibited in Episode 1 and 2.
• There are only 5 points separating the men, with a major switch up in their series rankings.
  • Kumail has now jumped from 5th place to 3rd place, and with a current series score of 41 points.
  • Armando has slipped down from 3rd to 4th place, with 39 series points.
  • Joel rounds out the pack in 5th place with 36 series points; he was previously in 4th place.
  • However, none of the men should be too comfortable in their current series ranking positions. A 5 is a small enough range such that any one of them could easily take the lead in the next episode.
• Series 21 is still a women’s race with the girls having a 12 point lead over the men.
  • This is quite the gap, but can be reduced if the men start performing more competently, and the women have some disastrous low performing episodes. However, this behaviour would need to happen over two episodes at a minimum.
  • If Kumail continues his current improvement streak, he could be the man to break the glass ceiling.

From Figure 8 which displays all contestants (past and present) with respect to their average episode score (x-axis), and stadard deviation (y-axis) to date:

• The Series 21 cast all lie in the main cloud of observations and are well camouflaged. None of the contestants have extreme values of average episode score of deviation which atypical in the general history of taskmaster. -However, Joel is potentially on the brink of escaping from the cloud, as he as not as well camouflaged compared to other cast members.
• Roisin Conaty of Series 1 join Series 14’s Dara, Series 10’s Katherine and Series 11’s Charlotte as being outliers in Taskmaster history based on episode score statistics alone.
  • Roisin earned 7 and 21 points in the 2 episodes considered (30% of a 6 episode series), which is quite the spread and variation.
• The order of most volatile contestants (from episode scores): Joanna (most volatile), Kumail, Amy, Armando, Joel (least volatile).
  • It is interesting that a contestants variation in episode performance, has no correlation to their performance.
• The order of average episode performance is: Amy (highest average), Joanna, Kumail, Armando, Joel (lowest average).
  • This is inline with the current series progress, and it should do, since they are all subjected to the same denominator value (number of episodes average is taken over), and the numerator (the series points), is the only part of the fraction that can differ between the contestants.

We have some new neighbours and some departures in the neighbourhoods we have created around each contestant in the Series 21 cast. From Figure 9:

• No Series 21 contestants are in the same household as prior contestants; they do not share the same value for average and standard deviation of episode scores.
  • This makes sense given that for most contestants, we are computing statistics with respect to 3 observations, and thus there is more opportunity for variation between contestants.
• Amy’s neighbourhood consists of 3 series winners, and 2 3rd place contestants.
  • Her nearest neighbour is either Series 17’s John Robins or Series 7’s Kerry Godliman, both of whom were series winners.
  • She shares the same average episode score as Series 6’s Liza Tarbuck, but Amy is more volatile in her performance.
• Armando’s neighbourhood is more varied with one 2nd placer, two 3rd placers, one 4th placer and one 5th placers.
  • His nearest neighbour is Series 6’s Tim Vine who finished 2nd place overall.
  • He shares the same average episode score as Series 19’s Jason Mantzoukas, but is less volatile in his performance. I don’t think this is a hard task to achieve though.
• Joanna has seen the largest change in her neighbourhood due to her change in series ranking. She has one 1st placers, three 2nd placers, and one 3rd place neighbours.
  • Her nearest neighbour is Series 9’s Katy Wix, sharing the same average episode score, but exhibiting less variation.
• Joel’s neighbourhood consists of one 2nd place neighbour, one 4th placer, and three 5th placers.
  • His nearest neighbour is Series 12’s Victoria Coren Mitchell. Joel can be seen as a less volatile version of Series 13’s Ardal O’Hanlon; they share the same average episode score but Joel exhibits this with lower variation.
• Kumail’s neighbourhood consists of varied neighbours; there is a mixture of one 3rd placer, three 4th placers, and one 5th placer.
  • From a visual perspective, all of these neighbours seem to be equidistant from Kumail.
  • Series 14’s John Kearns does share the same average episode score as Kumail, although Kumail is less volatile than John (not the hardest feat).