The Latest Research From Nature: Can Big Data Predict When Your Idol Will Be out of Business?

A recent paper published in a Nature journal, "Quantifying and predicting success in show business," collected and analyzed the work and development data of more than one million actors, and deduced the career development characteristics and personal development laws of actors in film history.

A recent study published in Communications, a subsidiary of Nature, has attracted widespread attention from the scientific and entertainment communities. Several researchers from the Department of Mathematics at Queen Mary College London published an article titled "Predicting the Career Cycle of Actors through Quantitative Methods."

The data for this study were collected from the beginning of record keeping to January 16, 2016.1,512,472 actors and 896,029 actresses have career records on IMDb.

The earliest data can be traced back to 1888. In the study, they summarized some characteristics, which are also very interesting and worth thinking about.

A flash in the pan: the fate of most actors

This is the first conclusion the research team reached after quantitatively analyzing these data: there are a large number of actors who only have works at the beginning of their careers, and then they are silent for a long time.

They may have adjustments in their career direction, but this is because in the film and television industry, high-quality works and high-quality roles are themselves a very scarce resource.

The research team believes that during an actor's career,90% is the time when people are unemployed, and only 2% of the actors can support themselves through performance remuneration.

When analyzing the accumulated wealth of actors during their careers, a very obvious Matthew effect is also reflected, that is, the vast majority of resources in the industry are concentrated in the hands of a few people in the group.

The study found that there are about 100 male actors in film history, who have concentrated about 80% of film resources in history.

The embarrassment of actresses: a common problem in the global film and television industry

Annus mirabilis  It is a concept in European and American culture, which is literally translated into Chinese. "Miracle Moment"When a discipline achieves rapid and significant breakthroughs, it is called Annus mirabilis  .

In this article, it also refers to the most glorious period of an actor's career, and also means the highlight moment. For example, Zhao Wei in the 1990s and F4 in the millennium have shown obviousThe Miracle Yearfeature.

In this study, after counting and analyzing the work data of all actors who have been in the industry for more than 20 years, two characteristics were found:

• Male actors have more opportunities for roles.Moreover, the Annus mirabilis moment in an actor's acting career may occur at any time in his career;
  
• Not only do actresses have far fewer job opportunities than male actors, but for them, the Annus mirabilis moment in their acting career isFor most actresses, it only happens when they are young and at the beginning of their careers.

The following figure shows some of the research methods in this paper:

L: The length of the actor's career;

S: The number of years the actor has works, the number is based on the records of IMDb each year;

k: the number of works produced by the actor in that year;

n: the production efficiency of the actor;

For example, the example in the picture is about an actor whose career lasted for L = 23 years, and in the 12 years with works (s = 12 years), he had a total of 17 works (n = 17).

Predictable miracle moment: When will idols walk the flower path?

These findings are not limited to the group. In the study, the researchers used data from the careers of millions of actors to define an average model:

As shown in the figure:

ξ(κ):Works that indicate the deviation of the calculated year from the miracle year;

κ: represents the deviation from the miracle year;

This model can calculate an actor's miracle year based on the data he has already generated.

That is to say, when we want to estimate how long it will take for an actor to reach the peak of his career, we only need to use his previous career data and put it into this model to estimate how many years it will take for him to reach the peak, or whether he has already reached his peak. Annus mirabilis Miracle moment.

If the deviation value of κ is calculated to be below 0, it means that the actor will become famous in κ years!

If κ is greater than 0, it means that the actor may have passed his miracle moment and may enter a stage of stable development in the future.

According to the research team, the accuracy of this model is now close to 85%, the team also hopes to provide some reference to the entertainment industry.

Data-quantified actor development: What truth are you talking about?

In the entertainment industry, there is a saying "Small success depends on praise, big success depends on luck, and forced praise will lead to nothing."There are also many fortune tellers on the Internet who describe the rules of an actor's career development. They attract the attention of fans by predicting the fortunes of celebrities and business tycoons.

Whether it is numerology based on the eight characters or historical data on the development of film and television to date, they are all temporary conclusions drawn by following the laws and experience of their own academic systems.

For example, numerology is to deduce trends, while quantitative data is to summarize certain characteristics shown in the data. However, these conclusions are not equal to results, nor do they represent opinions. The more open the platform and public opinion environment, the more aesthetic and demanding the audience are, and they are the most qualified to judge this.

Ultimately, the success of an actor's career is determined byDepends on the quality of the individual work, which stems from the individual effort of the actor, and will not be restricted by any established rules.

References:

[1]. "Quantifying and predicting success in show business" was published in "Nature Communications" in June 2019;

[2]. "Mathematicians work out how to predict success in show business" published in ScienceDaily in June 2019;