canadian cylons
some of you may have noticed that a lot of the cylons on BSG are played by canadians. but, you might argue, many of the non-cylons are also played by canadians. this sounds like a job for conditional probabilities!
i'm sure you're all some of you might be familiar with the standard notation for conditional probability, P(A|B). annoyingly, this is to be read "the probability of A, given that B", which always seems more than a little backward to me. but it allows us to distinguish, for example, P(stupid|conservative) from P(conservative|stupid) (if JSMill is correct, the second probability listed there is higher than the first).
looking over the 30 presumably most prominent cast members listed on the battlestar wiki main page for the series, we get the following counts:
nationalityhumancylon
canadian108
non-cdian84
that tells us:
P(canadian|cylon) = 8/12 = 2/3
P(not canadian|cylon) = 4/12 = 1/3
P(canadian|human) = 10/18 = 5/9
P(not canadian|human) = 8/18 = 4/9
in both the cylon and human case, the probability of the actor in question being a canadian is over 50%, reflecting the obvious tendency to cast smaller parts mostly with local talent. you can also see that if you run the conditionals the other way:
P(cylon|canadian) = 8/18 = 4/9
P(human|canadian) = 10/18 = 5/9
P(cylon|not canadian) = 4/12 = 1/3
P(human|not canadian) = 8/12 = 2/3
but, as noted earlier, all of this includes some fairly small parts. while "Jammer" and "Hotdog" were certainly characters that were occasionally important, they were hardly the centres of the series. so, two ways to get around that:
if we look more specifically at the final five, we find that
P(final five|canadian) = 4/18,
which isn't terribly high, but
P(canadian|final five) = 4/5
which is much bigger.
similarly, if we restrict our attention to the first ten characters listed on the battlestar wiki page, on the theory that they're the more prominent characters, we find:
nationalityhumancylon
canadian14
non-cdian50
so for the major characters, P(cylon|canadian) = 80% and P(canadian|cylon) is a whopping 100%. thus, the question is: why did major human parts mostly go to non-canadians, but major cylon parts go exclusively to canadians? is it because we look like you, and talk almost like you, but aren't in fact you?
given the resolution of the show, of course the funner question is whether this was all a prediction of obamacare. but i'll let you crunch the statistics on that yourself :-)
i'm sure you're all some of you might be familiar with the standard notation for conditional probability, P(A|B). annoyingly, this is to be read "the probability of A, given that B", which always seems more than a little backward to me. but it allows us to distinguish, for example, P(stupid|conservative) from P(conservative|stupid) (if JSMill is correct, the second probability listed there is higher than the first).
looking over the 30 presumably most prominent cast members listed on the battlestar wiki main page for the series, we get the following counts:
nationalityhumancylon
canadian108
non-cdian84
that tells us:
P(canadian|cylon) = 8/12 = 2/3
P(not canadian|cylon) = 4/12 = 1/3
P(canadian|human) = 10/18 = 5/9
P(not canadian|human) = 8/18 = 4/9
in both the cylon and human case, the probability of the actor in question being a canadian is over 50%, reflecting the obvious tendency to cast smaller parts mostly with local talent. you can also see that if you run the conditionals the other way:
P(cylon|canadian) = 8/18 = 4/9
P(human|canadian) = 10/18 = 5/9
P(cylon|not canadian) = 4/12 = 1/3
P(human|not canadian) = 8/12 = 2/3
but, as noted earlier, all of this includes some fairly small parts. while "Jammer" and "Hotdog" were certainly characters that were occasionally important, they were hardly the centres of the series. so, two ways to get around that:
if we look more specifically at the final five, we find that
P(final five|canadian) = 4/18,
which isn't terribly high, but
P(canadian|final five) = 4/5
which is much bigger.
similarly, if we restrict our attention to the first ten characters listed on the battlestar wiki page, on the theory that they're the more prominent characters, we find:
nationalityhumancylon
canadian14
non-cdian50
so for the major characters, P(cylon|canadian) = 80% and P(canadian|cylon) is a whopping 100%. thus, the question is: why did major human parts mostly go to non-canadians, but major cylon parts go exclusively to canadians? is it because we look like you, and talk almost like you, but aren't in fact you?
given the resolution of the show, of course the funner question is whether this was all a prediction of obamacare. but i'll let you crunch the statistics on that yourself :-)