And why? Because they’re based on hype. But that’s OK, Ben Zauzmer — Harvard freshman, analytical whiz kid and proprietor of the new “matrix algebra”-based awards prognostication site Ben’s Oscar Forecast! Movieline’s Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics has the science down and is soliciting interns for next year’s awards-season death march. Inquire within. According to his site, Zauzmer’s predictions derive quantities for each film’s Oscar nomination (or non-nomination) showing, representation at other awards shows, and Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes data for the “major categories.” Next: With all of these numbers in the chart for each nominee in the category over the past decade, using a formula from linear algebra, Ben derived the best approximation of the relative factors of each award and critic score. These factors were applied to this year’s nominees – one formula for each category – and the percentage was calculated as a movie’s score out of the total scores. Pretty cool, except… uh: Best Picture Winner: The Artist (18%) Best Director Winner: Michel Hazanavicius – The Artist (28%) Best Actor Winner: Jean Dujardin – The Artist (28%) Best Actress Winner: Meryl Streep – The Iron Lady (24%) Viola Davis – The Help (24%) [ED: Davis and Streep are separated by 0.7%, surprise] Best Supporting Actor Winner: Christopher Plummer – Beginners (29%) Best Supporting Actress Winner: Octavia Spencer – The Help (27%) Best Writing – Original Screenplay Winner: Woody Allen – Midnight in Paris (27%) Best Writing – Adapted Screenplay Winner: Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, Jim Rash – The Descendants (24%) Best Animated Feature Winner: Rango (32%) Best Foreign Language Film Winner: A Separation – Iran (27%) …so on and so forth. Where have we seen these before? There’s no doubt something here, though — perhaps what’s missing is to factor in the average Academy voter’s age ? Oh, and the average weekly advertising outlay by The Weinstein Company. OH , and Uggie’s own age multiplied by the crucial tail wags-per-minute (TwPM) metric. Anyway, yeah. Needs work! But math is hard, etc. [ Ben’s Oscar Forecast ]
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Math-Based Oscar Predictions Not Too Different From Hype-Based Oscar Predictions
