The sixth season of HBO's Game of Thrones is just a little out of reach and, while fans are agonizing over who is really going to stay alive in the series and ultimately take the Iron Throne, Mathematicians from the Macalester College turned to Network Science to figure out who will statistically prevail and published the result of their efforts in Mathematical Association of America's Math Horizons journal.
The recent trailer for the sixth season already is not looking good for our favorite characters since the High Sparrow openly declared that everyone pretty much deserves death but Associate Professor Andrew J. Beveridge and his undergraduate student Jie Shan just statistically proved that fans may be on to something with a certain character.
After a series of mapping and charting character mentions, interactions and individual appearances in George R.R. Martin's "A Storm of Swords," the two mathematicians came up with a social network-like map for each of the "main" characters and, yes, the thicker the line between two characters, the more weight their relationship have. Take a look at the map below.
The showrunners also mentioned that season six is the season where the female characters would take center stage so, if the result of the study is accurate, there may just be a face-off between former married couple Tyrion and Sansa. Remember that the study was conducted using only the third book in the series but it would be interesting to find out how things will play out from hereon.
Game of Thrones returns to HBO April 24.
