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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."
OK, while I can certainly go along with watching second-rate actors in bad make-up and cute actresses, throwing around a few equations that no one is likely to examine, and one confusing graph...and earning (possibly) a PhD in the process, what really got my attention was the line:
"And to be fair, I'll tell you that my first order guesses, while probably not too far off, were chosen at least partly to obtain a reasonable result on our first try."
Now THAT is my idea of effort!
Chaos, panic, disorder...my work here is done.
For good Buffy information (they had this story linked a while back I believe), check out Buffista. Their links page (http://www.buffistas.org/links.php) is quite extensive... Not bad.
And, of course, you have to check out TV Tome's Buffy page, with good reviews, show guide and spoilers...
Any other good ones?
I don't get the novelty of this. It's the classic "Rabbits and Foxes" problem that any mathematics or engineering student should have been exposed to in a differential equations course. Tuning the free parameters in the equations was probably "Sunnydale" specific, but otherwise, what's the big deal?
is that it's remarkable how (after making basic assumptions) the very ideas of a stable vampire/human equilibrium are sound, and they are consistent with the "normal" Buffy universe. Many television shows and movies are mathematically improbable in even the most basic sense (like the ecosystem in the Matrix, for example). More importantly, we can assume that this was not intentional on the writer's part, I'm sure they wouldn't even grasp the "classic problem"; they probably didn't study engineering or mathematics in school. What the author of the study doesn't state, but I will, is the implication of his exercise in intellectual masturbation taken with the previous assumption.
Why would it work out, what made these writers different than other writers? I think it's a plot driven element, and a reflection of the real causes of social attitudes. I'm willing to venture a guess that they (the writers) kept the number of vampires and incidents in the series low so that it would seem more likely people wouldn't realize that there were real vampires around in the fictional Buffy scenario. From this, we determine vampires could exist in stable equilibrium if this was the case. If the prey on the show knew about the predators in a larger sense, the equations wouldn't be so simple any longer, and the stable equilibrium would be lost. What we consider "under the radar" and thus unnoticed is a perfect niche for small, select groups of predators to operate within, in REAL life. So in conclusion, the writers are clearly not buffoons, and your neighboor IS a vampire.
QED.
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
I once wrote a paper analyzing the data from the Fastest-Finger qualifying game on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, using info from a website that logged all of the qualifying player's names and times. I then performed simple stat anaysis tests to show that the reason more men made it into the contestant chair is because more men were attempting, and that women were actually better at playing the Fastest Finger game, despite claims that the game favored men.
Valid enough to be published and silence the critics? No way... far too little data do have that kind of certainty. Valid enough to get me an A+ on the project... yep. This was for a stats class, all I needed was to prove that I knew how to write a statistical report, not that I could collect solid data or pick a topic that meant anything to the world.
Maybe there was a serious reason for him to do the "study"... but I don't think it's gonna get published in any place with scientific credibility.
Do you have a link to the essay you wrote? I would like to read it.
- philipd
Philosophistry
There must be someone out there prepared to sponsor a Chair of Imaginary Population Studies and give this guy a job.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.