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Abstract:
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This talk presents the result of a collaboration between worlds of literature and statistics. George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire is an ongoing series of epic fantasy novels that is known for its large cast of characters, intricate plots and conflicts resulting in numerous, sometimes shocking deaths in the fictional world of Westeros and Essos. This is not about a struggle between the forces of good and evil, and readers do not know what to expect in terms of the eventual resolution of the story's many threads. We apply here the methods of survival analysis to see if we can discern patterns that could inform the literary analysis of the text. Is the author even-handed in dealing death or does he have favorites? Are amoral characters as likely to win or die as the ones trying to be moral? Such questions can be framed and analyzed using statistical means. We discuss data selection, the choice of variables and units of measurements, and intricacies of defining event times in fiction. We then compare survival between different groups of characters. Find out if hard numbers can reveal future plots better than fan theories.
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