Is it so hard to imagine that a popular series could represent a non-traditional narrative structure in which there is no, one, main character?
Mathematicians mapped “Game of Thrones” relationship to find the main character
31–40 of 66 posts
Re: Mathematicians mapped “Game of Thrones” relationship to find the main character
#32Or you know... you could count the number of chapters that every character has and come up with the one that has the highest number of chapters as the main character?
Or you could just count the number of times their names are mentioned... Except neither approach really represents character importance accurately. Why just go the naive route when you can extract more information from your data by using a more complex approach? The article actually counters your point exactly: " For example, Arya Stark, Sansa’s younger sister, has the third most chapters with 34, but ranks behind Sa…
> Or you could just count the number of times their names are mentioned
"Hodor"
Re: Mathematicians mapped “Game of Thrones” relationship to find the main character
#33The graph is interesting. But maybe Game of Thrones doesn't have a "main" character. One of the things fans love about the books is that they subvert genre expectations at every turn. Given how things are going, in fact, I won't be surprised if the next literary convention GRRM eschews is "conclusion".
Re: Mathematicians mapped “Game of Thrones” relationship to find the main character
#34Mathematicians take the fun out of everything and turn it into a graph
Re: Mathematicians mapped “Game of Thrones” relationship to find the main character
#35This would be interesting to run on the HN community, or any popular forum.
Re: Mathematicians mapped “Game of Thrones” relationship to find the main character
#36Can they map postmodern literature to find the plot?
Re: Mathematicians mapped “Game of Thrones” relationship to find the main character
#37This is only a popularity contest among the known characters and their known interactions. For instance, Littlefinger started out seemingly as a small player but then we learn later he was actually a rather significant player in almost all aspects of what has been happening so far. Granted his obvious interactions are with rather important people but by appearances the number of interactions seem low while actually b…
> [Tyrion is] not so significant
He was essentially responsible for the successful defense of King's Landing at the Battle of the Blackwater. If he hadn't been there, Stannis would be on the Iron Throne -- I'd call that high-impact.
I agree that Littlefinger's impact is under-represented by this measure, though. And obviously Arya has had no impact on anything important at all ti date...
Re: Mathematicians mapped “Game of Thrones” relationship to find the main character
#38you need a mathematician to come up with that diagram?
Graph centrality measures are a pretty interesting and ongoing topic of research in mathematics, yes. I'm familiar with methods based on eigenspectra of the matrix exponential (and some relevance to Krylov subspace methods), but that's really it.
But I guess there will be some arbitrariness involved anyway, even when mathematicians look at the problem. E.g. why would one measure be better than another?
Re: Mathematicians mapped “Game of Thrones” relationship to find the main character
#39This is only a popularity contest among the known characters and their known interactions. For instance, Littlefinger started out seemingly as a small player but then we learn later he was actually a rather significant player in almost all aspects of what has been happening so far. Granted his obvious interactions are with rather important people but by appearances the number of interactions seem low while actually b…
> [Tyrion is] not so significant He was essentially responsible for the successful defense of King's Landing at the Battle of the Blackwater. If he hadn't been there, Stannis would be on the Iron Throne -- I'd call that high-impact. I agree that Littlefinger's impact is under-represented by this measure, though. And obviously Arya has had no impact on anything important at all ti date...
Not to mention his kidnapping was responsible for the war that broke out in the first book and set the stage for every major event in the series. He also put a cross bow bolt through the gut of the guy who had been running the 7 kingdoms.
Re: Mathematicians mapped “Game of Thrones” relationship to find the main character
#40This is only a popularity contest among the known characters and their known interactions. For instance, Littlefinger started out seemingly as a small player but then we learn later he was actually a rather significant player in almost all aspects of what has been happening so far. Granted his obvious interactions are with rather important people but by appearances the number of interactions seem low while actually b…
> [Tyrion is] not so significant He was essentially responsible for the successful defense of King's Landing at the Battle of the Blackwater. If he hadn't been there, Stannis would be on the Iron Throne -- I'd call that high-impact. I agree that Littlefinger's impact is under-represented by this measure, though. And obviously Arya has had no impact on anything important at all ti date...
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