Game of Thrones paper: Was the Battle of Winterfell mathematically accurate? | Luís and João Batalha

TL;DR

A scientific paper was written to determine how many soldiers an army of the living would need to kill in order to defeat the army of the dead in the Battle of Winterfell.

Transcript

let me ask a a ridiculous tangent of a question louise you wrote a paper on uh on game of thrones battle of winterfell just as a side i'm sorry i noticed i'm sure you've done a lot of ridiculous stuff like this i just noticed that particular one by ridiculous i mean ridiculously awesome can you describe the the approach in this work which i believe... Read More

Key Insights

• 🥺 Combining science and popular media can lead to engaging and entertaining analyses.
• 💀 The Battle of Winterfell in Game of Thrones involved an important factor of soldiers getting resurrected as part of the army of the dead.
• ✌️ Differential equations were used to estimate the number of soldiers that needed to be killed for victory.
• 📺 Predicting the outcome of a TV show battle using scientific methods can be intriguing.
• 😓 The author's paper gained attention and support from the cast of Game of Thrones.
• 🪜 The accuracy of predictions in fictional battles is often uncertain, adding to the excitement of the show.
• 🏮 The paper demonstrates the application of scientific analysis to fictional scenarios.

Questions & Answers

Q: How did the author determine the size of the armies?

By analyzing images from previous episodes, the author was able to estimate the size of the armies in the Battle of Winterfell.

Q: What was the main factor that needed to be taken into account in the battle?

The main factor was that every time a soldier from the army of the living died, they would turn into a soldier for the army of the dead.

Q: What did the author theorize in their paper?

The author theorized that for the army of the living to win the battle without losing, each soldier would need to kill around 1.7 soldiers from the army of the dead.

Q: Did their predictions align with what happened in the show?

No, their predictions did not align with the actual outcome of the Battle of Winterfell.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• The author wrote a scientific paper during the airing of Game of Thrones' last season, analyzing the Battle of Winterfell.

• Their goal was to determine the number of soldiers from the army of the living required to kill in order to defeat the army of the dead.

• Using differential equations and images from previous episodes, they concluded a ratio of 1.7 soldiers from the army of the dead needed to be killed.