Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Great Stanford Buffy Population Equilibrium Study

Posted by chrisd on from the spike-as-cellular-automata dept.

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."

3 of 302 comments (clear)

  1. It's obviously in jest! by LojaK · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This paper isn't a thesis paper for pete's sake! It isn't a dissertation! It's OBVIOUSLY a lark. He's a fan of Buffy, and he decided to engage his brain and see what he could conclude about the Buffy-verse. It's a hoot, relax people.

    -- L.

  2. what a bunch of whiners by GunFodder · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This looks like a clever way to exercise one's professional tools to solve a trivial yet interesting problem. Why are all of you whiners jumping on him?

    One factor that he left out was the attrition of vampires due to recovered conscience or suicide, which might be high considering their lifestyle. There must be a percentage of vampires that accidentally get caught in sunlight as well, although those dim bulbs might be the kinds that get slayed eventually anyway. Other than that the numbers look good.

  3. Re:What A Waste by Jester99 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Right. Because Ph.D. students never have free time. They spend all their time on serious, groundbreaking research, only. And Ph.D. students never have their own webspace. If it's on the Internet, it must be a serious, peer-reviewed, critically analyzed piece of high academic merit.

    And in that supposed "free time" that Ph.D. students don't have, they'd never think about writing a mock paper using some differential equations that any second-year science student would understand because it amuses them.

    For Christ's sake, the guy watches Buffy (Yes, Ph.D. students at Universities do other things besides do research and contribute to "political, social, and scientific development;" sometimes they even watch television!) and ran some variables through a model, wrote up a silly paper, and published it on his web page.

    It's funny. Laugh. ;)