Statistician Creates Mathematical Model To Predict the Future of Game of Thrones

KentuckyFC writes One way of predicting the future is to study data about events in the past and build a statistical model that generates the same pattern of data. Statisticians can then use the model to generate data about the future. Now one statistician has taken this art to new heights by predicting the content of the soon-to-be published novels in the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R R Martin. The existing five novels are the basis of the hit TV series Game of Thrones. Each chapter in the existing books is told from the point of view of one of the characters. So far, 24 characters have starred in this way. The statistical approach uses the distribution of characters in chapters in the first five books to predict the distribution in the forthcoming novels. The results suggest that several characters will not appear at all and also throw light on whether one important character is dead or not, following an ambiguous story line in the existing novels. However, the model also serves to highlight the shortcomings of purely statistical approaches. For example, it does not "know" that characters who have already been killed off are unlikely to appear in future chapters. Neither does it allow for new characters that might appear. Nevertheless, this statistical approach to literature could introduce the process of mathematical modelling to more people than any textbook.

Comments

Hodor

[tage]

Hodor hodor hodor. Hodor, hodor hodor hodor hodor Hodor hodor. Hodor.

Re:Hodor

[Anonymous Coward]

I am Groot.

Re:Hodor

[xevioso]

I will make a prediction: Martin will kill off an important character because he has no idea how to write a character arc out of a wet paper bag. Someone important will die, because there's no way for him to have a character come to a resolution. This is known as "not knowing how to write a story" and instead is just writing a series of events.

Re:Hodor

[mistapotta]

Hodor hodor hodor. Hodor, hodor hodor hodor hodor Hodor hodor. Hodor.

I am Groot.

EPIC RAP BATTLES OF HISTORY!!!!!!

Re:Hodor

[Virtucon]

you forgot "mushroom mushroom" and "snake snake" FTFY.

Re:Hodor

[DutchUncle]

After the first few deliberate shockers, I came to the conclusion that GRRM is saving time on role-playing the story, and just rolling dice every so often. The reason it's taking so long for the next book is that he's been accepting deliveries from Chessex by the container-load, and he can't roll them all any more.

Re:Hodor

[i kan reed]

bool WillCharacterBeKilled(Character c)
{
    if(IsCharacterPopular(c))
        return true;
    else
        return true;
}

Re:Hodor

[maliqua]

Along with the idiots that discuss his 'work'.

He says as he discusses the aforementioned 'work'

Re: Hodor

[Dan East]

Stephen King did the same thing in The Stand. He ended up with too many characters and no actual story arc, so he had to abruptly kill a few off. Even then, the book still had a lame dues ex machina ending, and other major characters (Stu) ended up totally irrelevant at the end.

Re: Hodor

[Dan East]

bool WillCharacterBeKilled(Character c)
{
          return IsCharacterPopular(c) ? true : true;
}

Re:Hodor

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no idea where "hodor" does come from, but I know it doesn't come from your link. As a result, I'm not sure this counts as a "FTFY".

Re:Hodor

[JerryLove]

As much as I don't want to validate trolling by responding to it: many of Martin's kills are done specifically to play with expectations. We killed the presumptive protagonist (Ned Stark). Then the audience realizes this story is about the sone and his revenge. So we kill him. But at least we know who the villan is. So Joffrey dies.

Martin's work speaks for itself. I'll not feed the "can't write" comments. I'm sure your novels are better. Which movie network is producing them?

Re: Hodor

[TheCarp]

I really have to say, deus ex machina endings are one of my personal pet peeves across literature, its the hallmark of lazy uninteresting story telling. In fact, about the only place I was amused to see one was at the end of the one Deus Ex game I played to the end.... and not because I thought it was even particularly good, it wasn't, its just.... its the name of the game, so its at least amusing in that one context.

Re: Hodor

[AsmCoder8088]

why not just:

bool WillCharacterBeKilled(Character c) { return IsCharacterPopular(c); }

and if this were C++, I would do:

bool WillCharacterBeKilled(const Character &c) { return IsCharacterPopular(c); }

as passing by reference (using the ampersand) prevents having to create an unnecessary copy of the object.

Re:Hodor

[Anonymous Coward]

If you bothered to read the books, you will find them boring like hell and thats the worst sin in a writer. I don't mind mass killings of main characters as long as their deaths are meaningful to the story, but at this point most sentient beings would know that there is no story and he is simply catering to the lowest of the low and counting with their bad memory and or lack of logic \ common sense to keep going.

Re: Hodor

[AsmCoder8088]

oops... I just now realized that you are returning true in both cases... In which case the above would only work if the IsCharacterPopular(...) function always returns true.

Re: Hodor

[PPH]

Your algorithm has them killing off all the popular characters. You appear to have discovered the secret behind ABC's programming process.

Re:Hodor

[Whorhay]

I actually upset a co-worker, who must not have been very far into the TV series when she was discussing the series with some others. I quiped that "They all die." She took it as a literal spoiler or something somehow. The Author has as much as said that anytime a character becomes a critically important character to keep alive for the story to progress, that he starts figuring out how to kill them and keep the story going.

Personally I'd like Jon, Arya, Bran and Tyrion to survive at least until the climax of the series. But I doubt that even half of them will make it that far. I'd be surprised if half of them made it into the last book.

Re:Hodor

[Sentrion]

This discussion has actually inspired me to write a poem. OK, here it goes:

"Stories don't need plots, and poems don't need to rhyme."

That got me an A+ in my postmodern creative writing class.

Now I'm reminded of all the people who carefully watched every episode of Lost like there was going to be some sort of meaningful ending that could never had been predicted, made total sense once revealed, and made all the hours invested in over-stretched side plots worth enduring.

Fact is there is no "literature". There are only profits. And keeping an audience in a perpetual state of suspense like a crack addict waiting for his next high is now the commonly accepted practice to keep reeling in ad revenue. Actually having a plan for how to close the series does not matter. Show me a TV series that had an AWESOME final episode since the ending of Newhart in 1990.

Re: Hodor

[Culture20]

Is it really a deus ex machina if a central theme of the story is Deus?

Re:Hodor

[ultranova]

As much as I don't want to validate trolling by responding to it: many of Martin's kills are done specifically to play with expectations. We killed the presumptive protagonist (Ned Stark). Then the audience realizes this story is about the sone and his revenge. So we kill him. But at least we know who the villan is. So Joffrey dies.

I haven't watched or read the series beyond some individual scenes so I can't say if that's an accurate assesment of it, but if it is, then it's evidence for the granparent's position. "Playing with expectations" is a gimmick. It can work once or perhaps even twice, but if the entire work revolves around it, that strongly suggests the author relies on constant shocks because they have nothing else up their sleeve.

I'm sure your novels are better.

Just like everyone who complains about Obama/Bush/whatever better have a succesful term or two of US presidency behind them?

Re:Hodor

[hey!]

Martin will kill off an important character because he has no idea how to write a character arc out of a wet paper bag.

I actually don't think that's true. I think what you're reacting to comes with the epic scale of the novel (SoI&F really is just one, long, continuous work) -- both in word count and the enormous cast of characters. It's a kind of literary clutter. If you boiled Game of Thrones down to the story of Ned Stark's rise and downfall, that would be quite a satisfying (although grim) story arc. The fact that the story goes on and on after that dissipates the emotional impact of that one story line.

At over 1.7 million words currently, Song of Ice and Fire is more than six times as long as typical English translations of the Illiad and Odyssey combined. Think about that. In the time it took you to read just the first volume of Song of Ice and Fire, you could have read BOTH the Illiad and the Odyssey. And as a bonus you'd have read BOTH the Illiad and the Odyssey.

As works go further and further north of 200,000 words, they almost inevitably lose the tight, clockwork structure you expect in a 2 hour stage play or 70,000 word novel. Stories stop feeling like they have a beginning, middle, and end and start to feel more episodic. That happens to some stories well before they hit the 200,000 word mark (American Gods, 183 KWords).

At 473 KWords, Lord of the Rings is one of the rare exceptions. From Rivendell onward it's a marvel of complex yet tightly interwoven structure. But it's a hot steaming mess of false starts up until Ford of Bruinen. Tom Bombadil anyone? I think that it could probably be edited down to 400,000 words without losing much artistically. That's still almost miraculously long for a story that feels like one story.

I have a theory about episodic megastories like Song of Ice and Fire, which is that they aren't catharsis you get from a tightly plotted play or novel. They're about transporting a reader to a world he finds interesting to visit again and again. If so that bodes ill for the the Game of Thrones TV series now that Emilia Clarke has sworn off nude scenes.

Re:Hodor

[demonlapin]

Miss Clarke is quite attractive, but if it's boobs you want, Natalie Dormer has her beat.

Re:Hodor

[Scarletdown]

My predictions (Bear in mind that I have only read the first two books and watched the series up to the episode right before Viserys gets "crowned"):

1: Several more major characters will get killed of.
2: Many more ladies in the series will get thoroughly banged from behind.
3: Jon Snow will head up the Black watch and ally with Daenrys. In the end, they will hook up and rule the land together, and the two will bang happily ever after.

What would Hodor say?

Re:Hodor

[Anonymous Coward]

many of Martin's kills are done specifically to play with expectations.

A good story is like sex. Tease a little and pretend you aren't going to satisfy expectations. Then satisfy them! If all you do is play with expectations, it's because you're a subpar lover and teasing is what you think sex is about.

Re: Hodor

[rjforster]

I read your typo as 'douche ex machina', which would be kinda fitting here. Thanks.

Re:Hodor

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean Breaking Bad?

Re:Hodor

[Whorhay]

How do you have a story that doesn't have a plot. You could have a one sentence story and it would still have a plot. Not every story has a complicated plot, but a plot is pretty much just a simpler explanation of events.

And as the Anon's have already said, Breaking Bad had a well done ending. I would add that the ending for Dexter was good also.

Re:Hodor

[Kizul Emeraldfire]

Now THAT is one I would absolutely HAVE to watch!

Re:Hodor

[JerryLove]

I haven't watched or read the series beyond some individual scenes so I can't say if that's an accurate assesment of it, but if it is, then it's evidence for the granparent's position. "Playing with expectations" is a gimmick. It can work once or perhaps even twice, but if the entire work revolves around it, that strongly suggests the author relies on constant shocks because they have nothing else up their sleeve.

You can rest relieved to know that the plot does not revolve around it. I'm not sure "avoiding cliche and limiting tropes" is realistically a "gimmick".

I'm sure your novels are better.

Just like everyone who complains about Obama/Bush/whatever better have a succesful term or two of US presidency behind them?

I'm not sure the analogy holds. Perhaps a more accurate comparison would be to respond to the presidential critic with "I'm sure your policies are better thought out: where can I find them?".

Re:Hodor

[Stuarticus]

IMDB and virtually every other watcher disagrees about Dexter. I thought it was awful as well for whatever that's worth.

Statistical Literature

[__aaclcg7560]

Nevertheless, this statistical approach to literature could introduce the process of mathematical modelling to more people than any textbook.

Reading Shakespeare in the original Klingon language would probably easier.

Re:Statistical Literature

[Anonymous Coward]

Nevertheless, this statistical approach to literature could introduce the process of mathematical modelling to more people than any textbook.

Reading Shakespeare in the original Klingon language would probably easier.

I don't have to read Shakespeare in Klingon, reading him in the original english is enough to put me to sleep.

Re:Statistical Literature

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm more interested to know which major character it believes may be dead? Every character is statistically likely to be dead at some point.

Unless of course you take the 'You cannot kill what never lived' point of view.

Re:Statistical Literature

[neoritter]

WOOSH!! Right over your head. :P

Re:Statistical Literature

[plover]

I'm more interested to know which major character it believes may be dead? Every character is statistically likely to be dead at some point.

Unless of course you take the 'You cannot kill what never lived' point of view.

I think you meant "What is dead can never die". Not only is it a point of view, but it's actually a prayer of the Iron Islanders in GoT.

And yes, they can be killed, too. Just not all at once, it appears.

Re:Statistical Literature

[hey!]

I don't have to read Shakespeare in Klingon, reading him in the original english is enough to put me to sleep.

Some would say this doesn't deserved to be dignified with a response, but I disagree.

The best introduction to Shakespeares plays is to see them on stage, performed by actors who know how to perform Shakespeare. Because of the shift in language, there's special skill needed for presenting Shakespeare to modern audiences. You'll be amazed at how much you understand. Until you know the play's text you'll be missing a lot too, but in the performance you won't notice that.

I'd go so far as to say it's better to see a Shakespeare play performed first before attempting to read it. Then tackle the text with its footnotes on every line.

Re:Statistical Literature

[Anonymous Coward]

Or it's also possible that Shakespeare is not universally lovable and entertaining, and that different people have different opinions.

I've seen Shakespeare on stage, on stage-on-film (Mel Gibson in Hamlet, not sure if you consider this version good or bad, but I couldn't stand it), listened to a recorded version, and read books; every time I don't enjoy it or see what the attraction is.

Re:Statistical Literature

[hey!]

Oh, god. Mel Gibson's 1990 Hamlet was awful. It was the most asinine thing I've ever seen. Shakespeare for people who really *are* dummies. Reportedly it was director Franco Zeffirelli's attempt to make Shakespeare "less cerebral" and more accessible to the masses. What a choice to try that with! The whole point of Hamlet is that he's so damned smart the only person who can really stand in his way is him.

My point was that you've got to find an actor who can give a knowledgeable performance. Not some meat-head action star stunt cast miles out of his depth. I'd rather watch Arnold Schwarzenegger Hamlet.

I think the best film adaptation of Hamlet I've seen was Kenneth Branaugh's 1996 version, although it is long, long, long at 242 minutes (to Gibsons' 134 minutes). Olivier's 1948 Hamlet is generally highly regarded, but it's too sentimental for my taste. Haven't seen Derek Jacobi's 1980 BBC performance, but I've heard good things about it. I've seen snippets of the David Tennant Hamlet, and it looks promising, although it's hard to shake the impression that it's Dr. Who playing Hamlet.

Re:Statistical Literature

[Anonymous Coward]

They are fictional characters, they never lived to start with.

What about recursion?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can it predict the future Game of Thrones novels based on the variant input that Martin is aware of the model and dislikes being seen as predictable?

Eh, as long as the whole setting ends up eaten by the undead swarm I'll be happy with that ending. I don't even care if he does go soap-opera with it and have people randomly returning claiming that their deaths in the previous books were body doubles or evil twins or something, as long as everyone he imagined dies painfully.

Re:What about recursion?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can it predict the future Game of Thrones novels based on the variant input that Martin is aware of the model and dislikes being seen as predictable?

It's called a self-unfulfilling prophesy. Interestingly almost all statistical modeling appears to work that way, even for non-sentient targets.

The math is correct, unfortunately reality doesn't know that.

Re:What about recursion?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can it predict the future Game of Thrones novels based on the variant input that Martin is aware of the model and dislikes being seen as predictable?

It's called a self-unfulfilling prophesy. Interestingly almost all statistical modeling appears to work that way, even for non-sentient targets.

The math is correct, unfortunately reality doesn't know that.

Actually, this is a subtle attempt to influence the story: the statistician doesn't want a particular outcome X (e.g. favorite character getting killed), so he claims to have developed a predictive model showing that X is likely. Not wanting to be predictable, GRRM specifically writes an ending different than X, resulting in the statistician getting what he wants.

Another technique would be leaking a fake script, claiming to have read a draft manuscript, etc.

Re:What about recursion?

[TheCarp]

> Another technique would be leaking a fake script, claiming to have read a draft manuscript, etc.

Of course, the interesting thing about this techinique is you can only tell it if it fails to work, because the case where it works, and the case where it fails but the desired result was going to happen anyway are indistinguishable unless the author actually pipes up and comments on it.

This reminds me of a friend of mine who used to flash his high beams erratically as he came up to red lights because he knew thats how the fire trucks signal to give them a green. I tried to tell him that there was no way this was going to work, but he was convinced it did because....of course.... fairly often he would flash his lights and the light would turn green for him....

I do the same thing with my hand pretending I have the force....it "works" pretty well too. Which is to say....the light always changes.

Re:What about recursion?

[ClickOnThis]

This reminds me of a friend of mine who used to flash his high beams erratically as he came up to red lights because he knew thats how the fire trucks signal to give them a green. I tried to tell him that there was no way this was going to work, but he was convinced it did because....of course.... fairly often he would flash his lights and the light would turn green for him....

I think your friend is influenced by this.

I don't like it.

[khasim]

Nevertheless, this statistical approach to literature could introduce the process of mathematical modelling to more people than any textbook.

Until the writer reads that analysis and intentionally deviates from it.

In which case you've just shown them that mathematical modelling is unreliable.

When the real lesson should be not to use a tool for a job for which it was never intended.

Re:I don't like it.

[alen]

all the good books already follow formulas for story structure people figured out thousands of years ago. deviating from the formula is almost always a way to make a crappy book

Re:I don't like it.

[khasim]

deviating from the formula is almost always a way to make a crappy book

Go grab the last 20 titles in any genre. You'll see that most of them adhere to the tropes of that genre and are still crap.

A good author can write a good story even with the most formulaic plot.

A good author can write a good story even while subverting the established tropes of the genre.

But that's not important in this specific case. Martin can still change the specific tropes for individual characters in order to "twist" the ending from the predictions. (Boy meets/loses/gets girl) becomes (boy meets/loses/dies-in-battle-to-impress girl who married the local royalty once boy had left).

Since the "mathematical model" was wrong there, who's to say it isn't also wrong in X?

Re:I don't like it.

[king neckbeard]

What makes a work good or bad is usefully HOW they follow and deviate from tropes, not just whether or not something does or does not defy convention.

Re:I don't like it.

[Anonymous Coward]

The formula can also be a lazy crutch, deviating from which actually gives it some life.

From Greg Egan's Planck Dive

Sachio inclined his head briefly, fingertips to forehead, downloading information from the polis library. "Do you have any idea what archetypal narratives are?"
"Messages from the gods, or from the depths of the soul; who can say? But they encode the most profound and mysterious --"
Sachio cut him off impatiently. "They're the product of a few chance attractors in flesher neurophysiology. Whenever a more complex or subtle story was disseminated through an oral culture, it would eventually degenerate into an archetypal narrative. Once writing was invented, they were only ever created deliberately by fleshers who failed to understand what they were. If all of antiquity's greatest statues had been dropped into a glacier, they would have been reduced to a predictable spectrum of spheroidal pebbles by now; that does not make the spheroidal pebble the pinnacle of the artform. What you've created is not only devoid of truth, it's devoid of aesthetic merit."

Re:I don't like it.

[Anonymous Coward]

GRRM has already said, if too many people whine in a desperate attempt to save 's life, he will kill that character out of spite.
He'd probably go out of his way to prove this model wrong.

Re:I don't like it.

[cellocgw]

Nevertheless, this statistical approach to literature could introduce the process of mathematical modelling to more people than any textbook.

Until the writer reads that analysis and intentionally deviates from it.

Congratulations, you've just spoiled the plot of Minority Report (the original, not the movie).

Re:I don't like it.

[david_thornley]

The formulas say nothing about who dies halfway through the book. They're pretty much independent of the plot or plots.

just read Save the Cat

[alen]

GRRM uses a 3 act structure with the beats to break up the acts for each of the character arcs across all the books. all you have to do is figure out where the character is in their story arc

Limited to poor literature.

[Anonymous Coward]

This could only work or even be interesting with horrible literature. Good literature has twists which actually make it interesting and cannot be predicted through statistics.

Re:Limited to poor literature.

[alen]

yes it can. good literature has flawed characters and the story line is overcoming their flaws

Re:Limited to poor literature.

[david_thornley]

In GRRM's work, the story line is either overcoming their flaws or dying horribly.

Einstein Stops Writing and Starts Watching The OC

[Anonymous Coward]

waste of life

science is not for game of thrones

science is for killing game of thrones

when the cure is used as an effective weapon against you, you have certainly fallen into misbehavior and could decrease your misery by half-fold by:
STOP READING THE NEWS,
STOP WATCHING TV,
STOP TALKING TO YOU RETARD FRIENDS,
AND
STOP GOING TO YOU STUPID FUCKING JOB (make your own union with your work buddies then see if they want to re-hire you for more pay)*

You know you're getting paid enough when the guy who is paying you refuses to pay the full amount. You know you're getting fucked over when the guy who is paying you throws out an arbitrary number of dollars and you accept it with no changes. You need to have to self-confidence to demand more, now.

"Soon to be Published"

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the timeframe on "soon"? 30? 40 years?

Re:"Soon to be Published"

[Talderas]

Depends on when the author dies and the reins are given to Brandon Sanderson to finish it up once and for all.

Mental masturbation

[Aboroth]

By only looking at the data for what you have eaten the past few weeks, I can predict what you will eat tomorrow, with some random accuracy. (Assumptions: no friends, no changing tastes, constant values for availability and prices of all foods, no problems with traffic or weather, no sickness, etc).

This seems like pointless mental masturbation.

Re:Mental masturbation

[naturalog]

Yeah, he kind of covers that in section 5. No reason for picking his model (other than simplicity), it can't predict new characters, and there's very little data to go off of.

Sure, it's mental masturbation. But developing little toy models like this is still interesting and helps you understand limitations and keep up your skills without working on big, complicated, boring real statistical models. This kind of thing is worth doing for the same reason masturbating is worth doing--it's fun. As long as you don't take it too seriously and start confusing it with actual sex.

Books 4 and 5.

[mistapotta]

His analysis doesn't seem to take into account Martin originally wrote books 4 and 5 as one book, Seems to me those numbers should be averaged. Then again, IANAS.

Re:Books 4 and 5.

[Kjella]

His analysis doesn't seem to take into account Martin originally wrote books 4 and 5 as one book, Seems to me those numbers should be averaged. Then again, IANAS.

Actually it's a bit more complicated than that, it started as one book that outgrew itself and was divided geographically but the timelines eventually merge again in Dance of Dragons with characters from the south appearing after the events of the fourth book. So it will be highly biased towards characters based in the north/east since they're in the entire book, followed by characters travelling north while those staying in the south aren't in the fifth book at all, but who will certainly return to finish up their arcs.

Re:Books 4 and 5.

[boristhespider]

Actually he did average them. The paper is at http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.5830... and he discusses this issue in section 3.2.

Re:Books 4 and 5.

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

He specifically notes this -- see sections 3.1 through 3.3 of the paper.

I think another approach that might be interesting to try would be to model the distance between adjacent POV chapters by a given character given the distribution of their previous POV chapters. For instance, if Arya's POV chapters are 10 chapters apart on average and book 6 will be 70 chapters, you'd probably expect 6 or 7 Arya POV chapters if they're uniformly distributed. On the other hand, Ned's last POV chapter was quite a while ago, and so you would expect that trend to continue. [He could still have a POV chapter via Bran trying to see into Ned's past. That would certainly surprise readers looking at the list of POV characters!]

Re:Books 4 and 5.

[mistapotta]

I was looking for that and can't believe I missed it. Thanks for pointing it out to me.

Re:Books 4 and 5.

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone in Westeros is in the South, though. The North is just a large shambling hoard of wights and the others.

If this makes fanboys STFU

[broknstrngz]

great!

Interference

[gwstuff]

Since the makers of the series have access to this model (their PR department probably scans slashdot) and maybe they don't want to seem particularly predictable, a model of this type has extremely low odds of being accurate and popular simultaneously.

Re:Interference

[KamikazeSquid]

(their PR department probably scans slashdot)

I suspect that you are overestimating Slashdot's relevance to the general public.

Re:Interference

[u38cg]

PR departments use off the shelf search providers to keep them up to date on their areas of interest. They don't read slashdot, but they did read this story.

Prediction...

[pastafazou]

everyone you've read about so far dies. New characters are introduced. They die too. Children of new characters emerge, and die. Lots more dying, followed by a bit more dying.

Re:Prediction...

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

My prediction is that the last chapter will be two sentences long:

    Snow falls. Everyone dies.

Whether the first word is "snow" or "Snow" is left as an exercise to the reader.

Seriously...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who here gives a cr#p about Game of Thrones? It's just the latest crappy movie being pumped out.

Re:Seriously...

[pastafazou]

It's not a movie dumbass

My Mathematical Model tells me . . .

[DickBreath]

My mathematical model tells me that they will keep the show going for as long as possible as long as ratings are good. Then it will suddenly end. Maybe on a cliffhanger.

Re:My Mathematical Model tells me . . .

[91degrees]

And the kids wil be played by people 10 years older than their characters if it goes on long enough.

Soon to be published novels

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopes were raised and then crushed.

Let's save a lot of time.

[jpellino]

John Snow and Daenerys Targaryen FTW. Otherwise it wouldn't be Fire and Ice. Plus they're the only two non-incestuous family leads standing who would not produce a tragedy. And we know one important character is not dead, since another actress already leaked it. Hope he didn't pay too much for his statistificator.

Re:Let's save a lot of time.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Daenerys Targaryen

Obviously... or we'd lose the whole story in the East and the threat of invasion that it brings. This would be less obvious if Daenerys had someone who could take her place, but I don't see that whole plot line just being cut with a quick death of the Mother of Dragons.

Re:Let's save a lot of time.

[Austerity Empowers]

two non-incestuous family leads

Are you sure of that? Most of the better theories put Jon Snow's father as Rhaegar and mother as Lyanna, making him her nephew. That's incest outside of west virginia.

Re:Let's save a lot of time.

[Anonymous Coward]

And the stabbing he gets may make that hard. /spoilers

Re:Let's save a lot of time.

[Anonymous Coward]

He's basing his opinion on the series which didn't include that implication.

Re:Let's save a lot of time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally Id have gone for Bran Stark

Re:Let's save a lot of time.

[Kjella]

Obviously... or we'd lose the whole story in the East and the threat of invasion that it brings. This would be less obvious if Daenerys had someone who could take her place, but I don't see that whole plot line just being cut with a quick death of the Mother of Dragons.

Actually there's at least two potential plot lines in the books already to make that... ambiguous. Heck, half the plot is taking seemingly irreplaceable characters and kill them, the world keeps on twisting and turning. But yes, I don't see it happening until after they've sailed for Westeros.

Re:Let's save a lot of time.

[pastafazou]

Obviously you missed the end of the last book where John Snow gets killed.

Re:Let's save a lot of time.

[surd1618]

Daario is secretly making friends with the dragons locked in the dungeon. When Daenerys dies (in an unrelated and surprising way), he's going to unleash the dragons and take over.

Re:Let's save a lot of time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Stabbed, not killed.

George RR Martin should read this paper

[Jeremy Erwin]

and adjust his narrative appropriately. Statistics and literature have different priorities.

Re:George RR Martin should read this paper

[OzPeter]

and adjust his narrative appropriately. Statistics and literature have different priorities.

I would have thought his imminent heart attack would figure more in his planning.

Re:George RR Martin should read this paper

[Austerity Empowers]

I think he's been using it to generate the story. After all, even his dead characters have a frequent habit of returning to the storyline, having apparently forgotten they are dead.

If you've only ever seen the TV series, you wouldn't know that. Which is interesting to me, at least.

Statistics?

[grumpyman]

.... any outcome is as good of a chance as the aliens invasion and kill all characters.

proof of hack writing

[globaljustin]

I like TFA, it is interesting and his methods are applicable to alot of different fields, for example: alot of music producers (particularly of pop music) have *very* sharply defined parameters for beats per minute (BPM) and timing of the 'hook' or chorus/refrain part of the song. I could see reversing this algorithm with a bank of keywords to plug in...basically hack writing that is automated

I do not think this is evidence that "machines can replace human writers"...

I think this is evidence that GoT is formulaic hack writing...writing so predictable a dumb machine with the right algorithm can nail it!

Now, this may start of conversation of "sheeple will consume anything" and that's another conversation...but yeah...I see this as one human using an algorithm to prove another is a hack writer...very interesting

Re:proof of hack writing

[Anonymous Coward]

You can build a statistical model for any book or series of books that will perfectly predict what will happen.
We will only know if this thing is accurate when the new book comes out.

Re:proof of hack writing

[globaljustin]

well, i'm not going to disagree...

We will only know if this thing is accurate when the new book comes out.

right

and he could be reading this thread, right now, taking notes

or, he could be in Thailand getting a massage while a team of writers crank out copy that GRRM just signs-off on

my example is Lost and Buffy the Vampire Slayer...both are examples of absolute hack writing that benefitted from using marketing tactics to create a cult fanbase

Joss Whedon admitted they would just improvise plot/story/dialogue on the spot in later seasons...they litterally just made it up as they went along...it's the ultimate in "hack" writing

Joss Whedon is a professional, i will grant him, but he still was a hack...same with Lost...they replace "fan service" with plot, storytelling, character development, world building, and meaningful action

so i guess this is me admitting that this is too complex a topic to make one general statement about

IDIOT

[Anonymous Coward]

my mathematical model confirms this, here it is in pseodocode format

if timeOnHands > 0

you need something better to fill it with

What a waste of time and money

[Timmy D Programmer]

No wonder tuition is so high.

I have this system to win at craps

[mea2214]

This reminds me of all the systems with mathematical models to back them up showing how they hold secrets to winning at the dice game craps. Past events don't affect future events for random acts like throwing dice or flipping a coin. All that math is hooey. Baseball is full of these kind of stats with fans playing them off each other like Magic the Gathering cards not understanding a whit of the math underlying them. If students get taught to think critically of these kind of mathematics then using an example like this could be educational.

Re:I have this system to win at craps

[geekoid]

"All that math is hooey."
misapplied, not 'hooey'.

"Past events don't affect future events for random acts like throwing dice or flipping a coin"
but they with people.

Spoiler

[Anonymous Coward]

EVERYONE dies.

Another Stark dies

[dysmal]

Every time someone tries to predict the end, another Stark dies.

Re:Another Stark dies

[bjackson1]

Ah the good ol' Martin Certainty Principle

Re:Another Stark dies

[gijoel]

Right. My first reaction to reading the headline was, "You fool, you've doomed them all."

Asimov's First Foundation Problem

[Aristos Mazer]

I take it this statistician has not read Asimov. By announcing the prediction, you void the prediction. He should have put his program in a certified sarcophagus and then revealed after the show that he had correctly predicted it. Otherwise George R. R. Martin will just use his results as a reason to adjust the script!

Re:Asimov's First Foundation Problem

[dywolf]

no, the public prediction is merely a nudge to move the path of the story in the right direction, seeding the ground for the real prediction which remains hidden

Re:Asimov's First Foundation Problem

[Wain13001]

oh, how very Phil Dick. :)

Re:Asimov's First Foundation Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

Re:Asimov's First Foundation Problem

[vux984]

very Asimov too, as it turns out.

Not only is knowledge of the second foundation given to the first as a nudge, but later on the first is set up to eliminate a decoy second foundation as another nudge, while protecting the real second foundation.

My prediction:

[Anonymous Coward]

Boromir wakes up, turns to Legolas and says, "honey, I just had the strangest dream..."

This so-called statistician...

[Mister_Stoopid]

Now one statistician has taken this art to new heights by predicting the content of the soon-to-be published novels in the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R R Martin.

soon-to-be published novels in the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R R Martin.

soon-to-be published

soon

better re-check that model bro.

No mystery

[PPH]

Everyone is sitting at the table at a large feast and the scene switches to black.

My mathmatical prediction

[azcoyote]

The next book opens with an interesting but hard to follow prologue concerning random throwaway characters that you never heard of and will never hear about again.

Almost nothing really significant happens for tens of chapters, even though every chapter bleeds into the next with a cliffhanger making you want to read the next one. Plus there's several gratuitous sex scenes to keep the Slashdotters interested.

After many chapters of pretty much no development, something horrific happens toward the end making the fans say, "NO! He can't do that!" and so they read on.

It closes off with an unsatisfying cliffhanger ending with a teaser epilogue that advertises yet another book. We still learn pretty much nothing about what is north of the wall and any protagonists we rooted for are that much farther from achieving anything good. There's no deep moral significance and nothing to be learned about life except that one is better off not being a character in one of George R.R. Martin's books.

Rinse and repeat until the series becomes unprofitable. (Unless Martin gets hit by a car, seven novels simply will not be enough.)

Re:My mathmatical prediction

[geekoid]

You said math. Lets see it.

Re:My mathmatical prediction

[azcoyote]

lol, it was sarcasm. But the real math is in the profits. One could construct an economic formula to represent the profitability of fiction in popular markets relative to the general unexpectedness of its events and the use of cliffhangers and secrecy to keep the reader attached. I say "unexpectedness" and not "unpredictability" because it may really be that such outcomes, because they are determined by the desire to compel and surprise the reader in order to make the book profitable, are actually extremely predictable.

For example, I used to annoy my wife my predicting the ending to NCIS episodes long in advance. The killer would almost always be (1) the person you least suspect, because the character has no real rational justification for the crime in the early episode and (2) the one superfluous character introduced in the episode, since they didn't want to pay much and dedicate screen time to characters who did not push the plot forward. In short, because the writers of the show were trying so hard to be surprising, they would cook up contrived motives that could be presented in the last five minutes of the episode, and then make the one person who seemed most innocent actually turn out to be guilty. But then, this is predictable. It's just like how if you've watched enough episodes of House, M.D., you can easily guess that the person who first gets sick during the prologue is not the actual person who's going to pass out and end up in Dr. House's care.

In short, it is somewhat silly to analyze literature in terms of a kind of Asimovian statistical "psychohistory," when the real principles that structure the literature are so evident. For example, whether or not a particular character appears in future books is not determined relative to characters' appearances in prior books, but according to the MO of the author, which is not something that remains static over the years but which develops and fluctuates according to his historically-conditioned priorities. Vale is honest about the limitations of the statistical approach, but what I think is necessary is to recognize how that which derives from human freedom but ultimately manifests in statistical ways is always also at the same time codetermined by implicit principles and formulae (e.g. the economic viability of such and such kind of writing), especially economic ones.

Why use statistics?

[multimediavt]

Why use statistics? Couldn't you just read the books and find out what's going to happen? Idiot

Re:Why use statistics?

[Anonymous Coward]

That only works if the author writes the books.

Re:Why use statistics?

[GiganticLyingMouth]

Sure, but you'll need a time machine

Statistician invents the field of spoilers

[Anonymous Coward]

If you thought maths coursework ruined your tv time you haven't seen anything yet.

Endings are hard

[edawstwin]

None of the three endings to that game (I assume that you mean the original Deus Ex?) were particularly satisfying, and I think it's the greatest game ever produced. Endings are hard, as evidenced by The Sopranos, LOST, countless other video games, etc...

Jon Snow is perennially downtrodden

[jpellino]

so it's only fitting he end up having to clean the dragon litter boxes while she gets her mani/pedi.

Breaking Bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Breaking Bad.

The alternate ending. (Gotcha!)

Actually the regular ending was pretty good. Especially because if you watch really closely, we never saw Walter White die.

I smell sequel!

statstician writing a computer program isn't math

[NemoinSpace]

And it isn't programming. The only thing worse is a programmer that doesn't know math or statistics. There are a few companies that are trying to get a handle on machine learning and pattern recognition and matrix algorithms. Sadly, there is no real market for that stuff yet, so instead we run "quicksorts" on genome and try an predict endings for stupid games.
Occasionally,some genius will try his hand at encryption and give us heartbleed.
Do you know how many servers out there that are still vulnerable? LOTS. Maybe a systemfuckingd dev will fix that one automagicaly, because evidently, there is nobody left in IT that can manage to get 2 startup scripts to run anymore

galaxy hi copy

[Anonymous Coward]

http://mobilhicopy.blogspot.com/
galaxy s5
galaxy hi copy