Fans are endlessly speculating about the ending of Game of Thrones and which of the remaining characters of the HBO television series will survive to take Westeros.
Students at the Technical University of Munich are one step ahead of everyone by using a special algorithm to predict the survival or death of the various characters on the hit show.
A Unique Class Project
According to a press release from the university on Eurekalert, students attending a computer science seminar created an application scanning the web for data about the Game of Thrones. With the data collected, a set of algorithms are designed to crunch the information and predict the chances of survival of all the characters.
Students of this same course correctly called Jon Snow's return after his death in the fifth season.
Who Will Likely Survive To The End?
The last six episodes of Game of Thrones will see a lot of death and destruction, but who will be left standing at the end?
In the students' website, the numbers have spoken: Daenerys Targaryen is the character with the best chance of survival with just a 0.9 percent chance of dying in the final season. Other characters who are likely to be lucky are Tyrion Lannister (2.5 percent), Varys (3.2 percent), Samwell Tarly (3.3 percent), and Jaime Lannister (4 percent).
On the other hand, Bronn is the most likely to see his demise with a 93.5 percent likelihood of death, followed by Gregor Clegane (80.3 percent), Sansa Stark (73.3 percent), Bran Stark (57.8 percent), and Sandor Clegane (47.5 percent).
Jon Snow, who is tagged as the most popular character of the show, is only 12 percent likely to die in the eighth and final season.
Some of the factors that are taken into account are whether the character is noble or a peasant, with nobles having a higher chance of survival. Women are also more likely to survive in the Game of Thrones than men, while major characters also see a higher chance of survival.
Fans can check out their favorite characters' likelihood of survival via the website.
Making Algorithms Fun
Time will tell whether these predictions will prove correct or not, but there's no denying that it is a unique and extraordinary way to engage the students in computer technology.
"The combination of passion and teaching is a brilliant way to create new tools that matter," Professor Burkhard Rost, head of the Chair for Bioinformatics at TUM's Informatics faculty explains. "In our course at TUM we found a fun way to teach students how to use this technology and prepare them to build the next big thing once they graduate."
HBO will begin airing the final season of Game of Thrones on Sunday, April 14.
