Who is the main character in Game of Thrones? Mathematicians Have an Answer:
Fans of the Game of Thrones books and TV series have long quarreled over who the true hero of the story is. Daenerys? Tyrion? Jon Snow? Hodor? Every time a character seems to be developing into a protagonist, he or she is brutally killed (video). Such is the perilous existence of the major players in the world of the wildly popular HBO series—when you play the game of thrones, you win or you die.
But several main characters remain. And in order to determine the one true hero of them all—the one most vital to the story, with the most important connections to other characters—we must turn to math.
Andrew J. Beveridge, an associate professor of mathematics at Macalester College, and Jie Shan, an intrepid undergraduate, decided to turn the world of the Game of Thrones books into a social network using network science, a branch of applied graph theory that draws from several disciplines, including economics, sociology, and, computer science, to examine how information flows from one thing to another.
[...] the mathematicians ranked the characters by several different measures. One, called degree centrality, simply ranks the characters by how many others they're connected with. Other measures, like PageRank (the same algorithm that Google uses for its search engine), actually puts the characters into a feedback loop, rewarding them based on how important the people that they're associated with are in the network.
From TFS, here is the graph they constructed; the main character's name stands out among the others.
Their research, entitled "Network of Thrones," is published in the Mathematical Association of America's publication, Math Horizons (pdf).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @08:35AM
Everyone knows, it always comes down to the halfling.
(Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Friday April 15 2016, @08:37AM
Why the "?w=640" parameter on the graph's URL? All it does is making the picture unnecessarily smaller.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @09:00AM
640 pixels ought to be enough for anybody
(Score: 5, Interesting) by TheLink on Friday April 15 2016, @08:42AM
;)
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Friday April 15 2016, @11:40AM
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @11:02AM
Mentions within 15 words? Give me a break. No additional analysis at all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @11:09AM
For all the disdain showered upon the entertainment industry here, why is there so much gushing over this program?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Friday April 15 2016, @12:25PM
For all the disdain showered upon the entertainment industry here, why is there so much gushing over this program?
Why shouldn't there be? GoT is not the entertainment industry so criticism against the latter doesn't necessarily apply to the former. And what I gather is going on here is a relatively novel idea (at least for the US entertainment industry) of adding dramatic tension to a long, completely fictional artistic work by repeatedly building up a character through their connections and interactions with other characters, and then striking them down permanently for dramatic effect. Much of the art of the series appears to be in a study of the realignment of surviving characters after the loss of characters through death or other means.
If I recall correctly, the story got started in the first place because the author read a lot of old European history which is chock full of similar power struggles and the same fluidity of characters coming and going, living and dying that we see in GoT.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday April 15 2016, @02:07PM
Kind of sounds to me like it would trigger the Fox Effect--if anybody can get killed off whenever, why should I get invested with any particular character?
But it doesn't really sound like the kind of show I watch anyway, so meh. Keeping track of a multitude of constantly shifting loyalties just sounds exhausting.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday April 15 2016, @02:43PM
And yet it doesn't. The characters are so damned compelling (and there are so many of them) that there is always someone really interesting to watch somewhere. Seriously, if you've been avoiding it due to the hype, or just haven't got round to it yet... Get hold of series 1 and start watching now. It's popular for a reason.
That said, if they ever do kill off Tyrion, I might just have to (threaten to) stop watching. That guy is just too good.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @07:04PM
Ah, I see. It's the "since I like this show, it is worthy of talking about" kind of thing. Discussion of most other shows would be deemed 'not worthy' here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @09:05PM
Hipster detected.
The show is too mainstream for you. We get it. Mainstream couldn't produce anything that isn't complete shit and appeals to geeks.
Hint: It's so rare that when they actually do, it gets hyped, yes even on "Geek/Nerd" friendly outlets, such as this.
TL;DR: Fantasy & Sci-fi have been dumbed down for so long that when even a mediocre show is produced, it's news.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 15 2016, @09:55PM
Ah, I see. It's the "since I like this show, it is worthy of talking about" kind of thing.
I haven't watched more than a thirty second clip of the show and I never read the books. Sounds like a good story though, you just have to do bookkeeping.
(Score: 2) by devlux on Friday April 15 2016, @08:46PM
Well here is a great analysis of why it's popular in general.
I refer you to chart 1, which is a summary explaining the popularity metric required for most media to attract members of the male 12-90 demographic.
http://pbfcomics.com/237/ [pbfcomics.com]
As you can see via the analysis performed in the early stages, the summary is breathtaking in it's conclusion.
For Game of Thrones specifically, here is a second chart detailing the effects on anyone attempting to simulate the effects of any random 15 minute segment from game of thrones.
http://pbfcomics.com/267/ [pbfcomics.com] (possibly nsfw)
Now do you understand the appeal?
(Score: 3, Informative) by captain_nifty on Friday April 15 2016, @01:57PM
It's Tyrion
(Score: 2) by DutchUncle on Friday April 15 2016, @02:03PM
(Score: 3, Informative) by Immerman on Friday April 15 2016, @03:29PM
Granted, a lot of shows do have a main character they revolve around, but that hardly seems to be an inherent requirement. Friends springs to mind as a clear example of a show that revolves around relationships and group dynamics rather than a specific individual. Star Trek TNG and DS9 as well. Even with a presumably central character in the captain, the story rarely revolves around them, and quite often they are little more than a bit character in someone else's story. Kill them off and the series could continue with only moderate discontinuity. Try that with Seinfeld or Doctor Who, or even something where the main character isn't in the title. Yes, The Doctor is replaced fairly regularly, but he's still always The Doctor.
Is it an expression of our biological and/or cultural hierarchical tendencies that some feel compelled to find "the most important individual", even in scenarios where the concept isn't particularly relevant? Or just a symptom that some people have too much time on their hands, and nothing actually valuable to do with it - like the many long analyses over whether the Enterprise could take on the Death Star, or if Batman could take Superman in a fight?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Friday April 15 2016, @04:23PM
Let's release one story per day related to GoT until the season premiere (first Obama, then pseudo-science, what's tomorrow). The media loves it until the playoffs start, the web can endlessly argue, and that will drive up interest.
Man those marketing guys are good!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 16 2016, @12:57AM
Obviously the most important char is the one that has the biggest guns (or most effective).
It seems humans slaughtering humans can still be called humanity but
snow-monsters that don't talk, love or eat much are something different.
So humanities survival boils down to: ice vs fire and it's obvious who is the main dragon-rider character.
unless of course one can "argue" with a dragon and convince it "somehow" to let someone else ride???
Of course, thanks to humanity and all, some person will ride the whole good solution ("melt ice with air born fire")
into the grave just because. ^_^
Welcome your new snow-man overloads ... but not for long.