Wednesday 1 December 2010

Best Research Ever

I briefly mentioned this before, but the main plus point to my week in Munich is that it allowed me to fulfil a life-long dream and apply genuine maths research to the X-Men (note that I didn't claim this dream wasn't sad, merely long-held).

Because I care, and I know you're interested, I shall now display the results of my labours to the world.  Essentially, I've used my New Maths (TM) to create a method of classifying the X-Men into two groups: alive (A) and dead (D).  The actual method is too complicated to repeat here, but here's a small taste.  Simply choose your favourite X-Man, follow the prompts, and discover whether or not they've shuffled off this mortal coil.


Obviously, there are problems.  Deciding how many times a character has "died" would be worth another SS v X series in itself. The issue count only includes X-Men (as oppose to UXM) issues if the character didn't appear in UXM that month, and furthermore only counts when a character was on the roster, rather than enjoying a guest appearance.  Also, this tree was created using data from 20th Century X-Men, so it might not work too well with some of the new additions (plus, the presentation is shit, but it's late on Tuesday night and I'm passed the point of caring). 

One thing that isn't a bug, rather a feature, is the fact that sometimes the tree essentially just shrugs its shoulders and returns "dunno" (?).  My speciality lies in differentiating between situations when a single answer can be justified, and when it can't.

In any case, it's something for you to mess around with on a particularly slow day.

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