There’s a zillion characters in Game of Thrones, even after a bunch of them have been brutally bumped off. But among the likes of Tyrion, Bran, Dany, and pals, who’s really the main character? A team of mathematicians used a power far beyond Melisandre’s shadow magics to find out: the power of cold hard graphs.
盡管有些人已經被殘忍地干掉了，《權力的游戲》里的人物還是多得難以計數。但是在提利昂、布蘭、丹妮以及其他人物中，誰才是真正的主角呢？一個數學家團隊施展魔力，尋找答案，這個魔力可比梅麗珊卓的陰影魔法還強大——那就是客觀實在的圖表。

Macalester College associate professor of mathematics Andrew J. Beveridge and undergraduate student Jie Shan approached George R. R. Martin’s book series with a set of scientific approaches dubbed “Network Science.” It uses graph theory, economics, math, sociology, and a plethora of other disciplines to map out a vast, interconnected network between the characters that spread all over Westeros and Essos.
麥卡利斯特學院數學系副教授安德魯?J?貝弗里奇和本科生單杰用一套名為“網絡科學”的方法分析了喬治?R?R?馬丁的這一系列書籍。這套方法運用了圖論、經濟學、數學、社會學和其它許多學科的知識，描繪了一幅遍及維斯特洛和厄索斯的巨大人物關系網。

Using the third book in Martin’s saga, A Storm of Swords, and Shan created a huge character network, linking characters every time they appeared within 15 words of each other, weighted on whether or not said characters were in the same scene together. Nearly a thousand pages later, they had a map:
根據馬丁這一傳奇巨作的第三卷《冰雨的風暴》，貝弗里奇和單杰制作了一幅巨大的人物關系網。只要兩個人物出現的間隔在15個詞之內，就把他們連在一起，看看他們是不是出現在同一個場景。這樣分析了大概一千頁之后，他們得出了這張圖：

Unsurprisingly, the network spread the influence of characters pretty much where they were based in the books—Daenerys, isolated off in the East, Sansa and Tyrion down in the south in Kings Landing (among the likes of Cersei, Jamie, and Tywin), Jon Snow far to the north, and the then-alive Catelyn and Robb in the Western reaches of the Riverlands.
不出所料，人物在這個網絡中的影響力與書中體現的幾乎一模一樣。丹妮莉絲獨霸東方，珊莎和提利昂與瑟曦、詹姆、泰溫等人在君臨城南端，瓊恩?雪諾遠在北方，那時還活著的凱特琳和羅伯處于河間地西部。

After ranking the characters through various methods, the three most common characters that could be perceived as the “main” stars of the series emerged: Sansa Stark, Jon Snow, and—at the top in pretty much every measured regard—Tyrion Lannister.
在用幾種方法為人物排序之后，三個出現次數最多、可被視作主角的人物就浮出了水面：珊莎?史塔克、瓊恩?雪諾，以及在各種測量方法中排名都最高的提利昂?蘭尼斯特。

It’s not really that surprising—each chapter of a book in the series is told from the perspective of a different character, and Tyrion has the most chapters to his name across the whole saga. And of course, the data doesn’t really weigh in importance to the overall story. Speaking to Quartz, Beveridge noted that because Daenerys is so isolated in Essos, she doesn’t have as many connections as the characters based in Westeros, despite playing a huge role in the future of A Song of Ice and Fire’s main arc:
其實也沒有那么出乎意料——因為每一卷的每一章都是從不同角色的視角敘述的，而在整部小說中以提利昂作為敘事視角的章節最多。當然了，在整個故事中，數據并不足以說明一切。在接受Quartz雜志的采訪時，貝弗里奇提到，盡管丹妮莉絲在《冰與火之歌》未來的主線中扮演著非常重要的角色，但因為她身處偏僻的厄索斯，構建的關系就沒有維斯特洛人的那么多：

Daenerys really represents the future—you can see what’s about to happen based on the people she’s linked with.
丹妮莉絲確實代表著未來——你可以根據那些跟她有關系的人推斷故事發展。

Still, it’s a pretty fascinating insight into the focal points that the book series concentrates on—and it’s always cool when these analytical concepts are turned towards our favorite fictional universes.
但仍然，用這種方法來洞察這部書的焦點非常吸引人，并且這些分析概念可以用來解釋我們最喜歡的虛構世界，真是太酷了。

英文來源：gizmodo
譯者：實習生孫美真
審校&編輯：丹妮