Game of Thrones: maths picks the protagonist.
Two mathematicians turned A Storm of Swords into a network of 107 characters and 353 links — and the answer wasn't Jon Snow.
Varchas KoushikFounder · Storyteller & Learning Experience Designer
Who is the protagonist of Game of Thrones? Tywin? Arya? Jon Snow? Someone else? Let's turn to math to find out. This forms our story #24.
Andrew Beveridge and Jie Shan of Macalester College used network science to identify the protagonist. Thinking about Game of Thrones is a lot safer than playing it, isn't it?
So who came out on top? Tyrion Lannister. (Well, the Lannisters send their regards.)
They constructed the network by gathering data on how close characters' names appear to each other in the text of the book. Probability, combinatorics and numerical approximation were used to detect groupings among characters.
The researchers organised 107 characters into vertices, joined by 353 edges. The edges are the links between characters — thicker edges mean a stronger link. One important note: the analysis was based only on the third book in the series, A Storm of Swords.
A detailed explanation of this "Network of Thrones" appeared in the April 2016 issue of the Mathematical Association of America's magazine Math Horizons.
First published on LinkedIn as Math Storytelling #24
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Written by
Varchas Koushik
Founder · Storyteller & Learning Experience Designer
Founder of All Things Classroom. 10,000+ hours facilitating sessions with students across age groups and geographies; writes about game-based learning, story-driven teaching and what's possible when a lesson is designed like an experience instead of a script.
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