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The Great Stanford Buffy Population Equilibrium Study
Suture writes "A PhD candidate in ecology at Stanford University has done an ecological analysis of humans and vampires in Sunnydale, the home of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
He took some initial assumptions on rates of population growth, vampire feeding, etc and plugged them into a differential equations model. What he got was an equilibrium human population of 36,346, and an vampire population of around 18, and furthermore the equilibrium is stable. His conclusion was that even though the show's designers are not ecologists, they managed to come up with ideas that actually made ecological sense.
Scroll to the bottom of the page to see a pretty cool spiral graph of human population vs vampire population."
and I thought I had too much time on my hands...
I got an Phd for making an essay about the fact that Star Wars could not be real... not in this galaxy nor any other!
are there enough vampires in sunnyvale to sustain the show for another season?
"The cup... the drop... it's a YES!"
Sex - Find It
Spike: And I should do what with my spare time? Sit at home knitting cunning sweater sets? Ep: Out of My Mind
Just in case people think I have way too much time on my hands, I did a Google search and this was at the top of the list.
I must say the spiral curve the guy did looks a bit hallucinogenic... maybe he was on something?
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
> what Archie and Betty and Veronica might have been up to?
.kids domain! ;)
A clandistine manage-a-trois our parents were thankfully unaware of? Bring on the
"Old man yells at systemd"
The article? Umm yes of course I read it. This is Slashdot, silly. :)
The graph looks almost like a bad drawing of Dante's Inferno. Each twist is yet another level leading to hell.
Which, since Sunnyvale is where the hellmouth is - it sort of all works out. In a strange, sort of demented way.
(I think I'll go watch the Buffy musical again. It's got class. It's got style. And until you burn up - it sticks with you for a while.)
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
even though the show's designers are not ecologists, they managed to come up with ideas that actually made ecological sense
Maybe the writers did their research.
Successful shows usually have good writers who often do their homework.
Writers could even have first hand vampire experience!
You never know. Only a slayer can tell!
I can't beleive this paper got published, are you kidding me? He fails to take into account trolls and werewolves, which would skew the numbers towards vampires, as they are natural allies. I too am scientist in the field of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and am preparing my own study, but unlike this quack I'm not throwing it out unfinished in the hopes of garnering awards and acclaim. I hesitate to think of the damage that will be done when people use these figures in their studies.
It seems the author is forgetting about Angel --- Buffy spinoffs could make m, the rate of vampire migration negative. And should the exodus of VC's from Silicon Valley count as ex-migration of humans or of vampires?
foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
I mean, come on! That is as bad as being one of those guys that constantly goes to a website, telling himself that it's "intelligent and newsworthy", but really just wants to post a load of crap to the net so that others might find him cool.
Oh, shit, wait, I didn't mean.... damn.
What he got was an equilibrium human population of 36,346, and an vampire population of around 18, and furthermore the equilibrium is stable.
The Camarilla Princes are going to be really pissed when they find out they've been running at ( 1 / 10^5 ) / ( 18 / 36346 ) of their optimal capacity.
We Sabbat knew better, of course.
Cousin Ellen
mods metamodded as "Unfair"
They're ignoring the Infinite Alternate Universes theory as posited by Dr. Qrlang in New Superman #35.
I've always wondered how the vampires can even get a stiffy since they don't have a heartbeat....
Well, yeah, I am a geek and a think too much- so sue me.
graspee
It is without a doubt established that buffy is hot, how many male vampires will forsake their own kind to nail buffy??? This must be calculated into the equation.
He assumes that buffy and her gang slay 6 vamps per year. I've seen single fight-scenes with a higher score than that.
Assuming an average of 3 Vamps dusted per episode, and there are, what, about 24 episodes per season? That's 72 per year, or 4 times the total vamp population !
Mind you, you could change your assumptions for Vampire 'birth rate' to have each vamp sire a new one on average every 3 months, and the sums would probably work out ok.
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
I spent my time drinking some beer instead of reading a report on Buffy. I figure I'm going to loose brain cells either way, so I might as well enjoy the buzz after my beer.
check out the best blog ever:
http://oehlberg.com
No problem; here's how you do it:
Do you have a Neilsen box on your TV?
Yes
No
An NDA prevents me from answering that
I don't have TV, you insensitive clod
Cowboy Neal is on my TV
Without showing you the really ugly math (after all, this is a family forum),
repeat after me all maths is fun and wonderful. Mathematically, we need a little bit of matrix algebra. We start by constructing a Jacobian matrix, ....
We could do all of that right here, but frankly I don't enjoy it. Besides which, I can just about guarantee that you are more interested in the ecology of vampire populations than in their theoretical mathematical peculiarities.
He's a very naughty boy, hes's insulted my mathematical sensibilities, so I'm not going to play with him any more, :-)#
seriously thats a fun article.
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit