The Winds of Winter Spoilers: Statistician Uses ‘Bayesian Prediction’, Predicting Deaths of Two Characters from the Upcoming Sixth Novel

By Kara Michelle Oct 04, 2014 02:22 AM EDT

The Winds of Winter Spoilers: Statistician Uses 'Bayesian Prediction', Predicting Deaths of Two Characters from the Upcoming Sixth Novel

George R. R. Martin's popular fantasy series "A Song of Ice and Fire" is about to have its sixth novel The Winds of Winter. It is said that the possible release date for the new book will be anytime between 2015 and 2017, but the author claims the book "will be done when it's done".

Many fans are waiting for the upcoming sixth novel, and the only thing we know so far is that 400 pages were written as of October 2012. The rest are speculations and predictions. Now, someone is even using statistics to predict parts of the narrative of the sixth novel. To be exact, statistician Richard Vale is trying to predict which characters will die in the upcoming novel and on the TV show 'Game of Thrones' using a method called the "Bayesian prediction".

Richard Vale is a statistician at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Based on the method he created, the statistician concluded that characters Arya Stark and Tyrion Lannister will be killed off in the sixth novel.

It doesn't come as too much of a surprise that people are trying to predict deaths for the upcoming novel; author George R.R. Martin is well-known for killing off characters from his novels. It all started with Eddard Stark, as in the main character in Martin's first novel.

For now, author Martin and two other co-writers produced a book called "The World of Ice and Fire", which narrates the history and lore of Westeros. The book will include hundreds of pages of unreleased material from the popular novel series, and will be available starting October 28.