That’s right, about a year ago we were batting around ideas for stats to pull, and Multiplayer Design Lead Max Hoberman pondered what the average gamertag was (in more ways than one!) Today, after a full year of scientific analysis (or a year of doing other things followed by a few minutes tinkering with database queries) I am honored to inform you that the average gamertag in the Halo 2 stats database is:
xArKKAAaEX
How do I figure? First of all, these are "modal" averages, making use of the most-common values rather than in-between values, since seeing an A and a C doesn’t mean that B is most expected. The most common gamertag length is 10, so that’s what I used here. In each letter position, I found the frequency distribution of letters at that position, blended it halfway against the expected letter distribution in English to call out the statistically significant differences, and took the most heavily weighted resulting letter for that position. The average gamertag starts and ends with X -- no surprise there -- and after that starts with "Ark". Coincidence? I don’t know.
-Roger