The United States National Security Agency, for example, uses it to study terrorist networks. Outside this fantasy world, network science has several other (serious) applications. “Daenerys really represents the future-you can see whats about to happen based on the people she’s linked with,” Beveridge said. (Indeed, her story really picks up two books later.) all around the map settle old scores and discover new parts of themselves.
#GAME OF THRONES BASTARD MAP SERIES#
She’s still vital to the network, though, because the characters on Westeros she is connected to are very important, and all characters essentially must go through her in order to interact with others on Essos.īeveridge argued that the network science can actually predict where the story is headed, citing Daenerys Targaryen’s connections as an example. A Game of Thrones obsessive takes a newbie through the HBO fantasy series for. But her ranking is hindered a bit by being isolated on the continent Essos, away from most of the main action on Westeros. To the chagrin of younger siblings everywhere, in this case, at least, big sister is just a little more valuable.ĭaenerys Targaryen, the “Mother of Dragons” and true heir to the Iron Throne, is also very important. For example, Arya Stark, Sansa’s younger sister, has the third most chapters with 34, but ranks behind Sansa in terms of network importance. That said, the network experiment didn’t reflect the number of POV chapters per character exactly. The results aren’t too surprising, given that Tyrion has the most point-of-view chapters in the book series, with 49. Characters don’t necessarily have to be friends to be linked-which is a good thing because there are few true friendships in the series. The links are weighted based on how often the two characters appeared in close proximity. Whenever two characters appeared within 15 words of one another, a link (or “edge”) was added between them. The pair started by connecting characters every time they “interacted” in the third book of the series, A Storm of Swords. “But it’s the kind of accessible application that shows what mathematics is all about, which is finding and explaining patterns.” Their research, entitled “Network of Thrones,” is published in the Mathematical Association of America’s publication, Math Horizons(pdf).
“This is a fanciful application of network science,” Beveridge told Quartz. The books and HBO fantasy series, with their massive cast of characters, various shifting allegiances, and intricate relationship dynamics, were a perfect fit to be studied mathematically. 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.