From: "Eric Jablow" <erjablow at netacc.net> To: "WSFA Mailing List" <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net> Subject: [WSFA] As reported on Slashdot--Sunnydale's Ecology Date: Sat, 7 Dec 2002 01:57:19 -0600 Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net> > Posted by chrisd on Friday December 06, at 08:58PM > from the spike-as-cellular-automata dept. > > Suture writes "A PhD candidate in ecology at Stanford University has done an > ecological analysis of humans and vampires in Sunnydale, the home of Buffy > the Vampire Slayer. He took some initial assumptions on rates of population > growth, vampire feeding, etc and plugged them into a differential equations > model. What he got was an equilibrium human population of 36,346, and an > vampire population of around 18, and furthermore the equilibrium is stable. > His conclusion was that even though the show's designers are not ecologists, > they managed to come up with ideas that actually made ecological sense. > Scroll to the bottom of the page to see a pretty cool spiral graph of human > population vs vampire population." > > Look here: http://www.stanford.edu/~bthomas/vamp/vampecology.htm Respectfully, Eric Jablow