When the 85th Annual Academy Awards, also known as the Oscars, aired on Sunday February 24, 2013, nearly a billion people tuned in to see who would be the big winners at the movie awards show. Many were watching to see if scientifically calculated predictions could, in fact, target the true winners.
In the days before the Oscars, the Huffington Post posted predictions of the Oscar winners from David Rothschild, an economist with a PhD from Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania who now works for MSR-NYC (Microsoft Research Debuts) studying social media data, polling, and markets, on their website. Rothschild used statistics from Oscar nominees over the past 30 years in order calculate his predictions. While some held true, there were several surprises throughout the night.
Although Ben Affleck’s Argo won Best Picture, which Rothschild predicted with a 94 percent chance, Life of Pi seemed to be the night’s big winner, taking home not only awards for Cinematography, Visual Effects, and Best Original Score, as predicted, but also Best Director under Ang Lee, surprising many as Steven Spielberg had been expected to win for Lincoln. However, Lincoln’s Daniel Day Lewis snagged Best Actor in a Lead Role , as predicted by Rothchild with a 99 percent chance of victory, making Lewis the first person to win three Oscars for Best Actor. (The other two films were There Will Be Blood from 2007 and My Left Foot from 1990, according to the Internet Movie Database.)
Two more predicted victories went to Jennifer Lawrence for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance in Silver Linings Playbook and Anne Hathaway for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Les Miserables. Christoph Waltz won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Django Unchained, which may have surprised some, but not all, as Rothschild had given him about a 42 percent chance of winning behind Tommy Lee Jones’ 45 percent for his role in Lincoln. The same situation occurred when Rothschild had Brave and Wreck it Ralph nearly tied for Best Animated Feature. Brave won the Oscar.
Several more of Rothschild’s predictions came true. Argo won Best Adapted Screenplay and Film Editing. Django Unchained was awarded the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and Les Miserables captured a victory for Best Sound Mixing. Awards for Costume Design, Best Original Song, Best Foreign Film, Best Animated Short Film, Live Short Film, and Documentary (Feature) were given to Anna Karenina, Skyfall, Amour, Paperman, Curfew, and Searching for Sugarman respectively.
The Oscars still held some surprising winners, whom Rothschild had not predicted, such as when Zero Dark Thirty and Skyfall tied for Best Sound Editing. Les Miserables took an unforeseen victory over The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey for Best Make-Up and Hair Design. Lincoln won Production/Set Design over Anna Karenina, and Inocente for Best Documentary (Short) over Open Heart.
Above all, the Oscars are a night to honor everyone and everything in the movie world for all that has been accomplished in the past year. The past year brought in many great films, and one can only wonder what is to come for 2013.