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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!"
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!
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.
> 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 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.
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.
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?
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!
- Buffy's success at finding a mate versus others' successes (hers should be assumed to be higher, which would increase the incidence of vampire-killing traits in the population),
- the (Dubya) Bush administration's environmental policy, and whether increased pollution is more harmful to the living or undead, and
- If you introduce population genetics to "The WB Frog," will he suddenly change sex and have the potential to bear young (as do amphibians when populations are all female, i think)?
the plot thickens...
That's my purse! I don't know you! -- Bobby Hill
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.
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 just found out that even if Angel were still on the air, Doyle would not be coming back. On Tuesday Glenn Quinn, the actor who played Doyle, died of unrevealed causes. More on this here.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
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.
I'm venturing on to a gray area of on-topicness, but...
For those of you who don't know, Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, also has another genre show called Firefly.
I just watched the latest episode (War Stories) tonight, and believe me when I tell you that if it hasn't aired in your timezone yet, you do not want to miss it. This one episode has got more character development, action (and I mean combat) and humor (and none of that slapstick stuff) than the entire season of Enterprise so far.
Again, if you like Buffy (and even if you don't), don't miss tonight's Firefly. This one deserves high ratings, but that can only happen if people know it's being aired. So now you know.
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.
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
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.
Did you think, at all, before you wrote that? What do you think "equilibrium" means?
In dynamics, an equilibrium point is a steady-state of the system: that is, a set of values for the system such that, if the system is set to that point, the system will no longer change.
What do you think "stable" means?
In this context, "stable" means that, if you move the system slightly away from the equilibrium point, it will naturally move back to the equilibrium point. On the other hand, an unstable system, when perturbed from the equilibrium point, will not return to that point.
So, for example, the point of an inverted cone is an unstable equilibrium point. I can balance a ball on it, and it won't go anywhere; but move it ever-so-slightly, and it will fall down. On the other hand, the bottom of a conical pit is stable; move the ball anywhere up from the bottom, and it will just fall back down again.
These are basic definitions for this sort of mathematics. It probably wouldn't hurt, under the circumstances, to assume the author knows what's he talking about, you know.
Bjorn Christianson
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
Where in heck does this #"$& soviet jokes come from? Did it originate here, like the "insensitive clod" and Natialie Portman? Or is something like "All your base are belong to us"?
J.
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.
Brian Thomas is a PhD candidate in ecology at Stanford University in California. He used MATLAB (running on a Sun Solaris 2.7 workstation and commanded remotely through Telnet) to manipulate equations and run the model. He'd like to thank Dr. Joan Roughgarden for teaching him the vast majority of what he knows about population dynamics, and he would be very interested in hearing your thoughts on this little treatise, because he is keen on spending a goodly portion of his career communicating science to intelligent but non-technical audiences (like you!).
Have you ever watched it?
And I mean really watched it, sat down and watched the two-hour roughly-in-order shots on FX at 7:00 EST?
It's quite possibly the best-written low-budget hot chick show ever. Every inconsistency is either explained away or simply believable, given a simple modicum of suspension_of_disbelief.
Contrast this with, oh, Star Trek or Andromeda or Farscape, or the other common "sci fi" series setups, and you'll see the "internal realism" he was talking about.
It doesn't take into account how the citizens feel. Having grown up in a town of 40,000, I can tell you that one murder was pretty big news. I can only recall hearing about murders two times during my ten or so years living there. Even assuming that I missed a few, that still wouldn't account for 18 vampires feeding once every three days (that's 2190 deaths per year--13 percent of the total murder rate for the ENTIRE UNITED STATES (~16000/yr)).
Anybody with half a brain would have moved out of that town long ago... and people ceratinly wouldn't be moving in.
It takes a handful of episodes to 'get it'. It really is phenominally deeply well written. It also has self parodying fluff on top that is, at it's best, witty banter that rivals Oscar Wilde. Once you're in, you realize that these are really well written episodes. As you watch, you realize the season has a structure. As you watch seasons, you realize that the seasons have a pattern and the entire show, has a structure where things from season three play out in season six, and themes that are treated one way in season two (when they are in high school) are revisited and reexamined in season six (when she's trying to raise her little sister after her mother dies).
It does parody itself, but it's a tongue in cheek, knowing parody when it does. Buffy will acknowledge in side comments about her wardrobe. In season five and six, when things get much more 'real' and very gritty, they still have their Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (and Johnathan), who lighten things up, but wind up with a similar end.
Good writing, surprisingly good acting (even Sarah Michelle Gellar, who I thought was a ditzy figurehead of the show until Season 5's 'The Body')... it's a great show. There's a reason some people say it's the best thing on television.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
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.