How Many Hobbits Could Chuck Norris Take In a Fight?

Inspired by the (relatively) recent Buzzfeed quiz, "How Many Five Year Old Children Can You Take In a Fight?" [1], we have been wondering about other potential battle royale matchups: Juggalos vs. Bronies, Juggalos vs. polar bears, Justin Bieber vs. Miley Cyrus and even goats vs. llamas. 

Perhaps our favorite attempt at recreating this kind of scenario is asking: how many hobbits could Chuck Norris take in a fight? The analysis was quite complex as we had to first set rules on the engagement (e.g., what kind of weapons? is mithril armor allowed or not? etc.) and decide which version of Chuck Norris (Walter, Texas Ranger Chuck Norris? Actual current Chuck Norris? Perhaps Delta Force Chuck Norris?) and what kind of hobbits (after all are we talking Brandybucks or Tooks? are these typical Shire hobbits or have they been abroad? etc.) we are talking about here.  

As you can suspect, there was a lot to sort out. But after much discussion and analysis we have come up with a clear answer but sadly, as the actual question has nothing to do with this blog, we've been forced to bury it in the footnotes [2]. What we can do, however, for the purposes of this blog is compare the distribution of references to hobbits, as opposed to references to Chuck Norris, in geotagged tweets. Starting from a 10% sample of all global geotagged tweets from July 2012 through March 2014, we collected all references to "hobbit*" and "Chuck Norris" to enable our comparison.

Hobbits vs. Chuck Norris, July 2012-March 2014

At the global level, there are actually quite comparable numbers of references to hobbits and Chuck Norris, thus making the location and scale of our hypothetical battle all the more important. There are 27,527 references to the man on Superman's pajamas, and 24,145 references to those short little guys with hairy feet.

What is evident, however, is that Chuck Norris isn't particularly popular anywhere but in the United States, as nearly half of the global references to him come from the USA, giving him a nearly 9000 tweet advantage over hobbits. Perhaps not everyone else in the world finds quite as much humor in the many Chuck Norris Facts as Americans do? Or perhaps other countries have their own Chuck Norris-like cult heroes to look up to [3]? The next closest country in terms of Chuck Norris appreciation is France, with just 250 more Chuck Norris tweets than hobbit tweets, followed up by South Africa, Nigeria and Puerto Rico in the top 5 countries favoring the man who predicted 1000 years of darkness were Barack Obama to be re-elected President of the United States.

Meanwhile, the top 5 countries favoring hobbits are Indonesia - where they hold a 2,141 tweet advantage - Turkey, Mexico, Spain and Malaysia, each of which have a greater than 500 tweet advantage for hobbits over Chuck Norris. A total of eleven countries have more than 100 more references to hobbits than Chuck Norris, a considerable feat given that only the top 3 Chuck Norris countries have a more than 100 tweet advantage.

In many ways, the pattern in this map is a replication of that from our recent map comparing references to Bieber and Miley; just as the only places with a real preference for Miley Cyrus were the USA and a smattering of African countries, so too are these the only places with a significant preference for Chuck Norris. Does this mean there is some sort of Chuck-Miley conspiracy afoot? Or that Bieber has taken command of an army of hobbits in his quest for world domination? We'll leave it to you to find out...

------
[1] See also: How many Justin Biebers could you take in a fight? How many 90 year olds could you take in a fight? How many hipsters could you take in a fight?
[2] The answer is zero.  Because hobbits are actually just fictional characters and Chuck Norris is a real living person. See? Sometimes there are clear and easy answers to tough questions.
[3] Ironically, of course, Kenya seems to display a slight preference for Chuck Norris over hobbits, despite Makmende's imposing presence.