I have long held a related theory about why sequels are never as good as the original. It's basically a regression to the mean. First assume that films are usually of about average quality. When a film is significantly above average quality, a sequel will be commissioned. The sequel is a film, so will usually be of about average quality. Therefore the sequel will be worse than the original. If studios took the unorthodox approach of only commissioning sequels of terrible films, then the sequels (which will usually be of about average quality), will usually be better than the original.
10:20: I dont trust linear regressions when its harder to guess the direction of he correlation from the scatter plot than to find new constellations on it
8:20 "Scores on GoodReads tend to be quiet good." You can bet they are. They gave 4.34 to the Twilight saga. I mean, not that it is the worst book ever, but c'mon.
That's the first time I've ever heard anyone suggest the Martian movie was better than the book. I have only ever heard the opposite and I agree with that assessment. The book is absolutely hilarious.
I hate reading. Most of the reading I do is technical textbooks, whitepapers and academic papers. So when it comes to recreational reading I don't have the time or patience. I probably sound like a paid shill for this video's sponsor, but I listen to audio books, which I can do without straining my eyes during otherwise wasted time (while driving, cycling etc.)
I did appreciate the majestic grandeur and epic sweep and scope of The Unbearable Lightness of Being the Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (the 24 volume set, natch). True kino, right there!
Which version of the movie? IMDB shows at least a dozen different movie versions along with a number of television ones as well. Odds are some of them are bad.
I really liked the 2002 version! But, apparently, there are like 7 movie versions dating all the way back to 1934? So I suppose at least a few of them must have sucked!
aetius31 I wonder if videos with Dr. Fry do in fact get more views than other Numberphile videos. My personal favourites are Dr.Grimes and Dr. Fry but I watch and enjoy all the Numberphile videos....
Eragon might not have been the best book ever, but the author was like 16 when he wrote it. The 2nd and 3rd book becomes better and better. As he grows older. The movie is trash.
Ok, stay with me here: wouldn't the relationship between the book and movie (the chart data) become skewed depending on how good the book was in the first place? Say you had a terrific movie based on a lackluster book. In this case, the movie team enhanced what should have been a mediocre movie into a blockbuster. But here's the rub: it was far easier for these guys because - with such low-hanging fruit - there was ample opportunity to improve on the content of the book. The end-result likely had little to do with the original manuscript. The filmmaker basically created something new but slapped on the book's title for credibility (or out of contract). This isn't the case wIth an exceptional book where there is far less 'dead area' for the movie makers to exploit. If the book is a masterpiece, these same filmmakers are dead in the water. With nothing novel to add, the only way they can go is downward. Then, of course, the movie will end up 'being worse than the book'.
Nicolas Flamel - that correlation is _indeterminate_ if you always prefer books. It'll be interesting to study the first time you like a film better than a book. Do tell. Anyway my wording was too definite; I was wildly guessing there may be a correlation.
I think that works with music as well. The first version of a song you hear sets the bar for other covers (or the original) It probably also sets your favorite Doctor which is why the best one is Tom Baker.
Well, there is certainly a similar effect with what someone's first Bond, Captain in Star Trek, or Doctor in Dr Who is. People almost always like their first, most.
Just to be a pedant on something only tangentially relevant to the video.. Metacritic isn't a posher version of Rotten Tomatoes, they measure different things. RT gives the percentage of critics that gave a film a positive review, metacritic gives a mean score based on the rating the critics gave. ie, 90 on MC means critics on average thought the film was incredible, whereas 90% on RT means most critics though the film was at least okay. This isn't related at all, people misusing rotten tomatoes is just a pet peeve of mine! Interesting video otherwise!
Yea, hopefully Walter Hickey used the user ratings of movies on Metacritic and not the critic mean score. Comparing a Metacritic critic score for a movie to a GoodReads score (user score) would not be a fair comparison.
@@starry_lis not all people value a movie the same though. Therefore sometimes the majority may say its not worth seeing even though you may actually value what the film offers.
Also, attractive is prima facile evident and pretty conclusive, whereas niceness isn’t borne out until the actual date. Not a a reason to avoid the juicy topic, just saying it’s not an example of sampling bias.
I enjoyed this video, but I think The Martian is a bad example of an "ok book." That book has a 4.4 rating on Goodreads, with 340,000+ 5-star ratings. I personally liked the movie but loved the book--it's probably a better example of a very good book and a very good movie. For movies significantly better than the book, there are a lot of good examples: Jaws, Die Hard, or Dr. Strangelove--maybe The Fantastic Mr. Fox. But not The Martian.
Fight Club definitely goes on that list for me. I love the film but I thought the book was just awful, it made me wonder how it even got adapted to film in the first place.
Thought the exact same thing, especially when the book had LOTS more maths in it than the film did, it's was one of the main reasons I preferred the book and didn't expect it from a maths based channel.
Also, Deathly Hallows was a TERRIBLE book. And especially if you're gonna talk about Part One and compare it to the first half of the book where literally nothing of interest happens and all 3 protagonists are bitching at each other because they got cryptic and confusing instructions and have no idea what to do....Yuck.
I absolutely loved this one. I love these "holy moly I never thought of it that way" moments, and this was possibly the best one so far this year. Wowzerz.
This is why everyone ought to be taught basic statistics in school. It really is the most useful area of maths in terms of real world everyday applications. Far more so than, say, geometry
Z Scores are my absolute favorite statistic! Unitless little values with so much value. It also helps that Hannah so completely knows how to convey complex systems in understandable, relatable concepts.
Note to self: Never let Hannah pick a movie... seriously. You think nobody's seen the Count of Monte Cristo? That movie is a classic (and the book was great too, imo).
The count of Monte Cristo wasn't a bad film anyway! But there were many movies inspired by the book, it depends on which you watched to. And the large variety of coordonates for the points shows that is not a really dependence between Hollywood and the books themselves. I also like the idea of analyzing with math things that, at a first view, would never pair with it.
I think a lot of it also has to do with a person's expectations. I tend to read more non-fiction than fiction, so on several occasions, I've watched the movie first and read the book later. This includes the examples of "bad" movies given; The Hitchhiker's Guide and the 2002 version of The Count of Monte Cristo. Each of those movies, if you did not expect them to be carbon copies of their source materials, were good (in my opinion, of course). I still enjoy both of them greatly, even after reading their books. Looking back on them now, they fixed many of the problems that the books presented to their being made into movies (i.e., Hitchhiker's Guide needing a clear, concise plot that would fit into two hours). I think that if you read the book first, you don't judge a movie as a movie, you judge the movie as a book. So yeah, The Count of Monte Cristo, coming in at ~2 hours film length, would be a soul-less summary of the twelve-hour-to-read abridged-version book, unless the filmmakers cut out some things to really develop the crucial storyline; namely friendship-betrayal-revenge-redemption. On the flipside, you can get filmmakers trying to remain too true to the books and making a bad movie, Deathly Hallows Pt. 1 being a good example of this. DHP1 additionally has the problem of being a film without much of a climax because it's the first of two parts. Still, if the filmmakers had been willing to stray a little more from the source text, they could have amped up the climax at the Malfoy's house and made a much better stand-alone movie, instead of just a first part to a longer movie. I have taken this insight to heart. In general, if I haven't read the book before the movie starts being made, I won't until after I've seen it. In this way, I get to enjoy the movie (assuming it's a good movie) and then I get to enjoy the book (assuming it's a good book). I recommend this approach to anybody that likes movies and likes books.
You might generalise this principle in n > 2 dimensions, like the "pick n-1" sayings. Examples: - "Attractive, smart, emotionally stable - pick two" - "Technologically advanced, enlightened, open to off world visitors - pick two" - "Elegant, hyperspace-capable, inexpensive, reliable, large cargo hold for abducting cows - pick four" (sounds way catchier in Aldebaranian) - "Inhabitable, near your star system, mineral-rich, unregulated - pick three"
Me: "Oh boy! A Hannah video! I love her! She's one of my favorites!" Hannah: "The Martian is only an okay book" Me: "YOU'RE DEAD TO ME!" (jk, awesome video Brady and Hannah! I will go pick up her new book on Audible right now!)
Are there any other factors as well? Movies generally have to condense a whole book into 1.5 to 2 hours. Could it be that more often than not this reduces the quality of the story and characters more than a movie can increase the enjoyment of the experience.
Yeah, but the old saying "A picture is worth a thousand words" very much holds true in filmmaking. Books explain the appearance of everything in detail, whereas the movie just shows what it looks like without having to deadicate time to describing it.
That certainly is a reason why even splint onto 2 movies the Deathly Hallows struggles, there was still a lot of content cut. Another example in the opposite way is the Shawshank Redemption is a short story so the movie expands on the book so much that it may be the biggest movie > book example
It depends. If people evaluate the movie based on how well it adapted the book, then I guess this could be a factor. But in general movie critics judge the quality of a film by its own merits, regardless of how well it implemented the source material.
Ben_ , true that movies have that potential, but film is an inherently more difficult media owing to its higher dimensionality, and more expensive, so movie makers are going to fall short of the expectations created by a well written book. Hanna’s the best!
Generally speaking, and this does vary depending on the story, a movie is about the length of a novella. It's true that a movie can show details in passing that would take many words to describe in a book, but it's also true that few of those words would actually make it past a decent editor. And, while movies have the advantage when it comes to visual detail, books have the advantage when it comes to the passage of time - "it rained for three days" is only five words, but showing it in a movie would either require a montage, or for a character to comment on how long it's been raining. And when it comes to expressing a character's internal thoughts and motivations, an author can just tell you what's on their mind, while a movie has to either get the actor to convey the thoughts through facial expression, body language, and other non-verbal cues, or get them to verbalise them... So, yeah, rule of thumb is that a standard 2 hour movie is about the same length as a novella.
This was an interesting paradox! However, I think that it could be improved, because the video was talking about the correlation of people hearing about the movie/book, I don't think that the final graphs formed a compelling argument, as it literally shows the opposite of what the video was about. I think Hollywood and books aren't the best example to explain this paradox because this paradox only applies when there actually isn't a correlation between the two. In my opinion there is a positive correlation between the quality of the book and movie because the quality of the book can definitely affect the movie with the plot of the story or the funding it gets (which is not assumed in the video). The toenails and diabetes explains it better, as there is, to my knowledge at least, no correlation between the two (correct me if I'm wrong).
Well, the video starts by making some observations about the quality of movie adaptations. It uses that as a jumping off point to talk about this sampling paradox, then it circles back around to answer the questions it raised about movie adaptations and to prove out that what we were actually seeing was in fact a sampling bias and not the negative correlation we perceived. As for diabetes, diabetics do tend to have foot problems because they'll commonly have some neuropathy that prevents them from realizing injuries to their feet, which can result in infections, which can ultimately result in amputations. The ingrown toenails and diabetes comparison is a little off-putting because a bad ingrown toenail is something a diabetic would have to take very seriously. The example is meant to show that there's no negative correlation between these things, which is absolutely true. You'd likely expect the opposite; the people with the worst diabetes are more likely to have issues with their feet, including, but not limited to, infected ingrown toenails.
I notice the axis for attractiveness doesn't go negative. So, why do women run from me? Just one look through a window, and they'll even run screaming out of their own house late at night.
I feel like I just wait for Numberphile to upload another video to inspire me to study.I love all their videos and have bought so many books based on what they mention.Keep uploading and inspiring sirs.
The film was great, and the book was great - the quality of one doesn't affect the quality of the other Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is very different in each medium it was adapted to, so comparing them all is tough
I saw the movie before reading the books. Loved the movie, still do, but I can understand why the movie can be disliked (it's basically a weird mashup of all books)
I find Hannah very attractive and she seems like a nice person, which means she is in the top right of the graph and hence out of my league. Ho hum, can't argue with the maths. :(
I was surprised when I saw a video with this title on such a channel,so I clicked on it by curiosity without excepting anything in particular. I am greatly surprised, this was actually very interesting. Thank you for this view on the matter.
I'm so glad that I watched this video. This was one the most informative and eye opener Numberphile videos for me. Hospital example really made me get it. The subject was mind blowing. Thank you so much.
First time I've ever heard anyone suggest the Martian movie was better than the book. But I do agree with the harry potter books.The books were waaaaaaaay better than the movie.
This video is my introduction to the idea that there are people who read The Martian and didn't completely love it. I thought it was universal, at least among anyone who likes science, which is basically my entire crowd.
A lot of this is also the expectation you have. If the book is really good, you expect a high class movie that fits your interpretation of the book. But some things in books can't be done properly in movies, given the short time frame and limited possibillities of film making. So it's nearly impossible for a film to live up to your expectation if you really enjoyed the book. ;)
My introduction to The Hitchhiker's Guide was randomly running across the BBC TV series that I feel is an outstanding rendition of the books even after I had read them after the series.
The original TV series was based on the original radio series. The first book (1979) came after the radio series (1978) but before the TV series (1981).
@@adaddinsane Yes, I have since experienced the radio series as well. Thanks for the essential info! Regardless of any personal favoritism, it's indisputable that each medium is superior to the others.
I think this effect is certainly real but there is also an effect where movie producers just don't understand that movies are fundamentally much, much shorter than books so not every book can be adapted into a single movie without losses.
It's a very interresting phenomenon. That said, I think the book/movie problem is a lot more complex. As she metioned you wouldn't finish a big book that's bad. If the book is good though, you might consider watching the movie. It's not a big investment in time to do so, even if the movie is not as good as the book. If you don't read a lot of books, or maybe are a slow reader, you wouldn't invest time reading the book after watching the movie. Amongst other reasons, you know how everyting ends. I actually think books kind of by default are better than movies. They will force you to imagine things, to invest in the story. You will spend a lot more time in that universe. You will have a lot more details.
so you're more likely to like a book after reading it than a movie because of various reasons (proportional time validation, effort required per medium, average critical capacity of the producer/consumer, etc.) but then could you scale the axes to correct for that?
What I love about graphs and averages is how you can skew the data to show what you want. That graph about meanness vs attractiveness was somehow changed to niceness vs attractiveness. Stick super nice at 0 and complete A-hole at the top of the Y axis and the graph would look completely different.
True. Even ignoring ulcers and whatnot, the circulation issues mean their toenails are often quite bad unless they're amazing at sticking exactly to their treatment plans and all that stuff.
I love how things like this can be applied mathematically, and because of that, can be simultaneously applied to computer science. For example in big data. If we are aware of this trend and bias, we can attempt to correct for it.
It is an amazing book. The only one I would use to fix uneven legs of chair. But seriously: FabledDan has a point and it should be point of most comments here - "smart" critics says the book is horrible, but many people love it - well, let them whip! I mean... Let them be! Individual taste matters. Lately sometimes the taste is shaped by critics opinion, which is quite pathological, tho :(
Diabetics actually commonly do have poor toenails, so I think it’s a bad example. Diabetes often causes numbness in the feet due to peripheral artery disease and/or sciatica. People who can’t feel their feet don’t take as good care of them.
Please include the name of the theorem, paradox, etc in the title of description, so we can search for it later. Love the videos, thanks for the lesson. Much appreciated.
Damn, Hannah! Now I have to bid farewell to my long-held belief that books are almost always better than the movies. I'm still reluctant to do so. TBH, I'm not totally convinced that it's legit to normalize the GR scores that much. If I'm not entirely mistaken, the true book scores would be a little better than what we see in the last diagram which would shift the picture and result in more cases of books better than the movie. Anyway, super interesting video as usual. Hope to see more of Hannah soon. :)
Doesn't the question require a minimum standard of sorts? Can you ruin a bad book? If a book must meet a certain level of goodness, or at least popularity, to be considered movie worthy and ruinable then don't we need to be selective with the statistics? If a bad book becomes a bad movie = Not ruined Bad book becomes a good movie = Not ruined Good book becomes a good movie = Not ruined Good book becomes a bad movie = Ruined If bad books can't be ruined, then shouldn't we be looking primarily at good books? If good books are evenly distributed along movie quality then, by definition, most good books are ruined. A good book has a good score (say 7/10 and above), a Not ruined book requires that the movie gets a similar or better score. Everything below that is either ruined or just not an improvement. Aren't we then required to look at that top right sector on the graph and say "Those are the movies that did NOT ruin the book, therefore, everything outside has been ruined" If Ruined > Not Ruined, then Hollywood does ruin books.
Captain Matticus Agreed. In general the books were probably better than the films, but Deathly Hallows Part 1 was fantastic. I’d actually say it was the second best movie of the series in filmmaking terms, after Prisoner of Azkaban. But maybe that’s just me.
"Count of Monte Cristo" was my mum's favorite film, and as a result was very firmly entrenched in my childhood memories. I don't know if this counts as a counter-proof but there you go :D
This is an excellent point, but I do think there are still some causative factors to keep in mind. Many more people are involved in making a film than a book. There's a lot more potential for things to go wrong, at a causative level, rather than a correlational one.
One point I would argue against about this theorem, is that she considers "popular" = "good" and that is a fallacy in itself. Also, the "bad" section doesn't mean a movie didn't ruin a book in itself, it could have been a bad book, but an even worse movie, so to speak. Having said that, it may be the case a movie is more an enjoyable experience than reading its book counterpart, but enjoyable doesn't have to equal good neither. Fun video, nevertheless, as always.
Hmmm... I wouldn't say Metacritic is a posher RT, but rather a more reliable source than RT? Does posher necessarily mean more reliable? Not sure as I've never used it in such context.
The TV show Episodes is about a related phenomenon. Two writers from the UK have a hit which gets picked up by a US network. The original is about the headmaster of an elite public school, while the American version ends up being about Matt LeBlanc coaching a school hockey team!
Thank you for the educational video Hannah Fry! I disagree that Hollywood ruins books. It is rather that it takes a good directer to make a good adaption. Kinda like moving a house but placing the items in the correct place. Or moving houses and placing the parts in places that accentuate the house better
"Alright Diabetes" is my favorite unreleased Radiohead album.
Agreed. The best song being "unemployed humanoid". Very catchy.
I heard that all the vocals had to be electronically lowered because Thom was singing in a pitch too high for human ears to register
As a RH fan I appreciate this comment.
Could have seen from miles away, since they are the same group who made Pablo Honey
Best comment.
I have long held a related theory about why sequels are never as good as the original. It's basically a regression to the mean.
First assume that films are usually of about average quality. When a film is significantly above average quality, a sequel will be commissioned. The sequel is a film, so will usually be of about average quality. Therefore the sequel will be worse than the original. If studios took the unorthodox approach of only commissioning sequels of terrible films, then the sequels (which will usually be of about average quality), will usually be better than the original.
Another perfect example of this phenomenon in action.
Some sequels are better. "Bride of Frankenstein" for one, "Godfather Part II" for another. But I guess those are the exceptions.
if every movie had a sequel then we would approach an even distribution.
Ethan Alfonso If every movie had a sequel we would have infinitely many movies...
DagarCoH if every movie is part of a series and every series had two entries I should say
Hannah Fry explains her take on the Universal Hot-Crazy Matrix.
Woah! Maybe it is the same phenomenon!
:O
sounds like some theory that would of been out of How i met your mother back in the day
it is
Come on guys! Let's make 113 comments before the likes change from 355.
Yeah, you're gonna need to make that top right triangle a bit bigger.
* A lot bigger *
I think the top right triangle actually overlaps the bottom left half.
LOL loving these comments
It's an infinite plane with a single border, so I don't think there's a problem with the size.
@@guilhermeferrao5968 I would never become a member of a club that accepts people like me.
Hannah is in everyone's top right triangle. She's out of everyone's league.
Came here to say it!
Hannah has diabetes and bad toenails? Damn.
I still would though.
When I become Emperor of the Galaxy, I will need Hannah's DNA for my clone army.
Jiggerjaw 3/10 So I wouldn't say that.
shadepotatoe everyone is out of your league if you're that rude
10:20: I dont trust linear regressions when its harder to guess the direction of he correlation from the scatter plot than to find new constellations on it
8:20 "Scores on GoodReads tend to be quiet good."
You can bet they are. They gave 4.34 to the Twilight saga.
I mean, not that it is the worst book ever, but c'mon.
Yeah, when every score is between 3.5 and 5 then those 1.5 points are worth a lot more.
I always assume there are less people reading books over all, so the books score becomes inflated
6:18 Hannah chilling out by herself in the top right :)
That's the first time I've ever heard anyone suggest the Martian movie was better than the book. I have only ever heard the opposite and I agree with that assessment. The book is absolutely hilarious.
2LegHumanist did you know about the movie first or the book first?
Yeah I liked the book more than movie. The movie did have a better ending though.
the problem is that there is a second invisible variables how much you like books vs how much you like movies.
Loved the book. Hated the movie.
I hate reading. Most of the reading I do is technical textbooks, whitepapers and academic papers. So when it comes to recreational reading I don't have the time or patience.
I probably sound like a paid shill for this video's sponsor, but I listen to audio books, which I can do without straining my eyes during otherwise wasted time (while driving, cycling etc.)
I love having Hannah Fry! She always teaches things that I enjoy learning about! Please have her do more Numberphile!
i am happy to see hanna again in these vids!
I only read technical manuals and no one has made a film of these. :( "Harry Potter and the 1980 - 1986 Mk3 Escort Repair manual".........
Hasn't that book about motorcycle maintenance been made into a film? Oh, wait a moment...
I did appreciate the majestic grandeur and epic sweep and scope of The Unbearable Lightness of Being the Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (the 24 volume set, natch). True kino, right there!
Well... I like the Count of Monte Cristo movie... :(
Which version of the movie? IMDB shows at least a dozen different movie versions along with a number of television ones as well. Odds are some of them are bad.
Which one? There's about 5.
Also the 1998 mini series is better then any of the movies.
I really liked the 2002 version! But, apparently, there are like 7 movie versions dating all the way back to 1934? So I suppose at least a few of them must have sucked!
I only saw the latest one (2002). I also liked it.
The video shows footage from the 1934 version
New Hannah Fry video, New 1 Million views video for numberfiles: No correlation.
Numberphiles*
The suffix philes means lover so they're number lovers
Brilliant :-)
aetius31 I wonder if videos with Dr. Fry do in fact get more views than other Numberphile videos. My personal favourites are Dr.Grimes and Dr. Fry but I watch and enjoy all the Numberphile videos....
I like Matt Parker and Cliff Stoll too.
Holly Krieger also
my favorite magic spell: Lorem Ipsem
And it's "it's", not "its". ;)
Oooof
Romani ite domum!!!
Laurelindo Likewise his correction of "Lorem Ipsem" isn't necessary. But hey it ended in all fun and banter so I see no reason to complain.
It's Leviosa not Leviosar!
The title should have been: "Bad diabetics have good toenails"
or just "Alright Diabetes".
the Eragon movie hasn't even happened tho, doesn't exist, nope, nope
I noticed that too why was the movie rated better than the book?
@@jonathangrey2183 I think it's saying movie was really bad, and the book wasn't that great
The book was not that great either, was it?
Eragon is the worst movie i have ever seen. Totally destroyed any chance of sequels. Amazing book though
Eragon might not have been the best book ever, but the author was like 16 when he wrote it. The 2nd and 3rd book becomes better and better. As he grows older.
The movie is trash.
Ok, stay with me here: wouldn't the relationship between the book and movie (the chart data) become skewed depending on how good the book was in the first place? Say you had a terrific movie based on a lackluster book. In this case, the movie team enhanced what should have been a mediocre movie into a blockbuster. But here's the rub: it was far easier for these guys because - with such low-hanging fruit - there was ample opportunity to improve on the content of the book. The end-result likely had little to do with the original manuscript. The filmmaker basically created something new but slapped on the book's title for credibility (or out of contract). This isn't the case wIth an exceptional book where there is far less 'dead area' for the movie makers to exploit. If the book is a masterpiece, these same filmmakers are dead in the water. With nothing novel to add, the only way they can go is downward. Then, of course, the movie will end up 'being worse than the book'.
Goodness of book vs. movie may also be correlated with *whichever you saw first.* What you do becomes a part of what you are.
Nicolas Flamel - that correlation is _indeterminate_ if you always prefer books. It'll be interesting to study the first time you like a film better than a book. Do tell. Anyway my wording was too definite; I was wildly guessing there may be a correlation.
I think that works with music as well. The first version of a song you hear sets the bar for other covers (or the original)
It probably also sets your favorite Doctor which is why the best one is Tom Baker.
duckrutt - Yes, I wonder if that explains the persistence of Coke and McDonalds too. Is the first _really_ the best?
Well, there is certainly a similar effect with what someone's first Bond, Captain in Star Trek, or Doctor in Dr Who is. People almost always like their first, most.
@@duckrutt false. David Tennant was not my first Doctor, but he will forever be my favorite.
I mean in general you're right, but not invariably.
Just to be a pedant on something only tangentially relevant to the video.. Metacritic isn't a posher version of Rotten Tomatoes, they measure different things. RT gives the percentage of critics that gave a film a positive review, metacritic gives a mean score based on the rating the critics gave. ie, 90 on MC means critics on average thought the film was incredible, whereas 90% on RT means most critics though the film was at least okay.
This isn't related at all, people misusing rotten tomatoes is just a pet peeve of mine! Interesting video otherwise!
Yea, hopefully Walter Hickey used the user ratings of movies on Metacritic and not the critic mean score. Comparing a Metacritic critic score for a movie to a GoodReads score (user score) would not be a fair comparison.
Rotten Tomatoes is like the electoral college of critic reviews.
hence, "posher".
a pedant would need to define the meaning of "posher" first in order to discredit it.
But then again RT gives you the only information you really need as a member of the audience: is it worth seeing?
@@starry_lis not all people value a movie the same though. Therefore sometimes the majority may say its not worth seeing even though you may actually value what the film offers.
Hannah: Go with me on this for a second.
Me: I would have gone with you to the end, into the very fires of Mordor 🤗
"You're not going to date anyone who isn't attractive or nice enough"
Well, when you're running out of options...
Then you stop dating. It's too much work anyway.
sounds like someone is spending their efforts on the "out of your league" triangle
Also, attractive is prima facile evident and pretty conclusive, whereas niceness isn’t borne out until the actual date. Not a a reason to avoid the juicy topic, just saying it’s not an example of sampling bias.
"Attractive" and "nice" are both relative to the quality of options you have available.
Bill Semenoff, the sampling happens due to the availability of individuals to date in the first place.
I enjoyed this video, but I think The Martian is a bad example of an "ok book." That book has a 4.4 rating on Goodreads, with 340,000+ 5-star ratings. I personally liked the movie but loved the book--it's probably a better example of a very good book and a very good movie.
For movies significantly better than the book, there are a lot of good examples: Jaws, Die Hard, or Dr. Strangelove--maybe The Fantastic Mr. Fox. But not The Martian.
Zach Taylor how were you here 42 minutes ago...
Fight Club definitely goes on that list for me. I love the film but I thought the book was just awful, it made me wonder how it even got adapted to film in the first place.
Even any of Roald Dahl's creations
Thought the exact same thing, especially when the book had LOTS more maths in it than the film did, it's was one of the main reasons I preferred the book and didn't expect it from a maths based channel.
Also, Deathly Hallows was a TERRIBLE book. And especially if you're gonna talk about Part One and compare it to the first half of the book where literally nothing of interest happens and all 3 protagonists are bitching at each other because they got cryptic and confusing instructions and have no idea what to do....Yuck.
0:23 Ah yes, the world-famous Lorem Ipsum spell.
I absolutely loved this one. I love these "holy moly I never thought of it that way" moments, and this was possibly the best one so far this year. Wowzerz.
I this this video will change the way I think about things and rate then in my head. This is good to know.
It really is a useful corrective for one of the cognitive biases that affect the way we assess the world.
Really is
This is why everyone ought to be taught basic statistics in school. It really is the most useful area of maths in terms of real world everyday applications. Far more so than, say, geometry
Z Scores are my absolute favorite statistic! Unitless little values with so much value.
It also helps that Hannah so completely knows how to convey complex systems in understandable, relatable concepts.
As a sport scientist, I always z-score my athletes.
*favoUrite
Note to self: Never let Hannah pick a movie... seriously. You think nobody's seen the Count of Monte Cristo? That movie is a classic (and the book was great too, imo).
The Count of Monte Cristo has been made into a movie at least four times. I wonder if people are thinking of different versions.
How did you manage to read it?
Conchita Mendez that's actually impressive... i couldn't get through the audio book without getting lost in character names
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is probably my favourite film ever, and HP 7 part 1 is probably my fave from the series… 😀
The count of Monte Cristo wasn't a bad film anyway! But there were many movies inspired by the book, it depends on which you watched to. And the large variety of coordonates for the points shows that is not a really dependence between Hollywood and the books themselves. I also like the idea of analyzing with math things that, at a first view, would never pair with it.
Monte Cristo was indeed an amazing movie, Hannah's taste a bit off. I mean no one is perfect lol.
I love how you analyze the most mundane things like this
I think a lot of it also has to do with a person's expectations. I tend to read more non-fiction than fiction, so on several occasions, I've watched the movie first and read the book later. This includes the examples of "bad" movies given; The Hitchhiker's Guide and the 2002 version of The Count of Monte Cristo. Each of those movies, if you did not expect them to be carbon copies of their source materials, were good (in my opinion, of course). I still enjoy both of them greatly, even after reading their books. Looking back on them now, they fixed many of the problems that the books presented to their being made into movies (i.e., Hitchhiker's Guide needing a clear, concise plot that would fit into two hours).
I think that if you read the book first, you don't judge a movie as a movie, you judge the movie as a book. So yeah, The Count of Monte Cristo, coming in at ~2 hours film length, would be a soul-less summary of the twelve-hour-to-read abridged-version book, unless the filmmakers cut out some things to really develop the crucial storyline; namely friendship-betrayal-revenge-redemption. On the flipside, you can get filmmakers trying to remain too true to the books and making a bad movie, Deathly Hallows Pt. 1 being a good example of this. DHP1 additionally has the problem of being a film without much of a climax because it's the first of two parts. Still, if the filmmakers had been willing to stray a little more from the source text, they could have amped up the climax at the Malfoy's house and made a much better stand-alone movie, instead of just a first part to a longer movie.
I have taken this insight to heart. In general, if I haven't read the book before the movie starts being made, I won't until after I've seen it. In this way, I get to enjoy the movie (assuming it's a good movie) and then I get to enjoy the book (assuming it's a good book). I recommend this approach to anybody that likes movies and likes books.
1:58 idk, The Fifty Shades Of Grey Trilogy are the worst books and movies, yet they are still in everyone's subconsciousness.
Long term though... in 50 to 100 years, I doubt it will be in the public consciousness.
You might generalise this principle in n > 2 dimensions, like the "pick n-1" sayings. Examples:
- "Attractive, smart, emotionally stable - pick two"
- "Technologically advanced, enlightened, open to off world visitors - pick two"
- "Elegant, hyperspace-capable, inexpensive, reliable, large cargo hold for abducting cows - pick four" (sounds way catchier in Aldebaranian)
- "Inhabitable, near your star system, mineral-rich, unregulated - pick three"
You’re top right corner all day!
aka out of your league
We can all go home, C S won the internet
"Too mean or ugly" is the title of my future autobiography.
Me: "Oh boy! A Hannah video! I love her! She's one of my favorites!"
Hannah: "The Martian is only an okay book"
Me: "YOU'RE DEAD TO ME!"
(jk, awesome video Brady and Hannah! I will go pick up her new book on Audible right now!)
i thought the exact same thing and ran to the comments to find other Martian book defenders 😂
The book is atrocious.
Are there any other factors as well? Movies generally have to condense a whole book into 1.5 to 2 hours. Could it be that more often than not this reduces the quality of the story and characters more than a movie can increase the enjoyment of the experience.
Yeah, but the old saying "A picture is worth a thousand words" very much holds true in filmmaking. Books explain the appearance of everything in detail, whereas the movie just shows what it looks like without having to deadicate time to describing it.
That certainly is a reason why even splint onto 2 movies the Deathly Hallows struggles, there was still a lot of content cut.
Another example in the opposite way is the Shawshank Redemption is a short story so the movie expands on the book so much that it may be the biggest movie > book example
It depends. If people evaluate the movie based on how well it adapted the book, then I guess this could be a factor. But in general movie critics judge the quality of a film by its own merits, regardless of how well it implemented the source material.
Ben_ , true that movies have that potential, but film is an inherently more difficult media owing to its higher dimensionality, and more expensive, so movie makers are going to fall short of the expectations created by a well written book.
Hanna’s the best!
Generally speaking, and this does vary depending on the story, a movie is about the length of a novella. It's true that a movie can show details in passing that would take many words to describe in a book, but it's also true that few of those words would actually make it past a decent editor. And, while movies have the advantage when it comes to visual detail, books have the advantage when it comes to the passage of time - "it rained for three days" is only five words, but showing it in a movie would either require a montage, or for a character to comment on how long it's been raining. And when it comes to expressing a character's internal thoughts and motivations, an author can just tell you what's on their mind, while a movie has to either get the actor to convey the thoughts through facial expression, body language, and other non-verbal cues, or get them to verbalise them...
So, yeah, rule of thumb is that a standard 2 hour movie is about the same length as a novella.
This was an interesting paradox!
However, I think that it could be improved, because the video was talking about the correlation of people hearing about the movie/book, I don't think that the final graphs formed a compelling argument, as it literally shows the opposite of what the video was about. I think Hollywood and books aren't the best example to explain this paradox because this paradox only applies when there actually isn't a correlation between the two. In my opinion there is a positive correlation between the quality of the book and movie because the quality of the book can definitely affect the movie with the plot of the story or the funding it gets (which is not assumed in the video). The toenails and diabetes explains it better, as there is, to my knowledge at least, no correlation between the two (correct me if I'm wrong).
Constantine de Jong
Actually having diabetes increases the risk of getting a particular fungal infection that affects toenails.
Well, the video starts by making some observations about the quality of movie adaptations. It uses that as a jumping off point to talk about this sampling paradox, then it circles back around to answer the questions it raised about movie adaptations and to prove out that what we were actually seeing was in fact a sampling bias and not the negative correlation we perceived.
As for diabetes, diabetics do tend to have foot problems because they'll commonly have some neuropathy that prevents them from realizing injuries to their feet, which can result in infections, which can ultimately result in amputations. The ingrown toenails and diabetes comparison is a little off-putting because a bad ingrown toenail is something a diabetic would have to take very seriously. The example is meant to show that there's no negative correlation between these things, which is absolutely true. You'd likely expect the opposite; the people with the worst diabetes are more likely to have issues with their feet, including, but not limited to, infected ingrown toenails.
0:30 This is *really* old news. Twenty five years ago, I first read the dictum "good books make bad movies, and bad books make good movies".
I notice the axis for attractiveness doesn't go negative. So, why do women run from me? Just one look through a window, and they'll even run screaming out of their own house late at night.
I feel like I just wait for Numberphile to upload another video to inspire me to study.I love all their videos and have bought so many books based on what they mention.Keep uploading and inspiring sirs.
Incredibly well explained and good to know!
This was such a great video. Fantastic job, Brady and Hannah!
I liked the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie, maybe I am the only one :/
Everybody I know likes the Hitchhiker's Guide movie. There's just something seriously wrong with this lady.
Read the books and you'll know :)
Just because the book is better doesn't make the movie bad. I quite enjoyed both.
The film was great, and the book was great - the quality of one doesn't affect the quality of the other
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is very different in each medium it was adapted to, so comparing them all is tough
I saw the movie before reading the books. Loved the movie, still do, but I can understand why the movie can be disliked (it's basically a weird mashup of all books)
That segue into the advert was flawless!
I find Hannah very attractive and she seems like a nice person, which means she is in the top right of the graph and hence out of my league. Ho hum, can't argue with the maths. :(
But that voice.
Doing the math ahead of time can at least save one a lot of anguish in this area :)
That's called a "sultry alto."
My professor discussed this yesterday and I just happened to stumble upon this video
Im sry numberphile i havent been watching your videos for a while but Hannah Fry just made me come back XD
That's weird. Hannah Fry usually makes people come forward
I was surprised when I saw a video with this title on such a channel,so I clicked on it by curiosity without excepting anything in particular.
I am greatly surprised, this was actually very interesting. Thank you for this view on the matter.
I wish the Z-score (or standard score) were explained more. It's a really useful tool that I think could be used in things like voting systems.
You know, I'm not into ASMR, but this hit the upper right quadrant of being both extremely pleasant to watch and listen to...
I'm so glad that I watched this video. This was one the most informative and eye opener Numberphile videos for me. Hospital example really made me get it. The subject was mind blowing. Thank you so much.
amazing, I love this kind of stuff, because it actually teaches us about basically any kind of topic in the real world.
First time I've ever heard anyone suggest the Martian movie was better than the book.
But I do agree with the harry potter books.The books were waaaaaaaay better than the movie.
Movie took out the most socially awkward parts from the book and it was still cringy. Still entertaining to read/watch.
Really? I've heard several people say the book was awful. Seems like people either like the book or hate it.
This video is my introduction to the idea that there are people who read The Martian and didn't completely love it. I thought it was universal, at least among anyone who likes science, which is basically my entire crowd.
Yeah I preferred the book but I can see why people who went movie-book wouldn't like it so much.
FAR. BETTER. BOOK. 👍👍
A lot of this is also the expectation you have. If the book is really good, you expect a high class movie that fits your interpretation of the book. But some things in books can't be done properly in movies, given the short time frame and limited possibillities of film making. So it's nearly impossible for a film to live up to your expectation if you really enjoyed the book. ;)
Yes.
Agreed.
Exactly
Apparently not according to the video. Not on purpose anyway
@@mijkolsmith not on purpose, and not all of them. But the answer is still yes.
My introduction to The Hitchhiker's Guide was randomly running across the BBC TV series that I feel is an outstanding rendition of the books even after I had read them after the series.
The original TV series was based on the original radio series. The first book (1979) came after the radio series (1978) but before the TV series (1981).
@@adaddinsane Yes, I have since experienced the radio series as well. Thanks for the essential info! Regardless of any personal favoritism, it's indisputable that each medium is superior to the others.
So the real question is when we are getting a movie based on Hannah's book. And how good it will be.
I think this effect is certainly real but there is also an effect where movie producers just don't understand that movies are fundamentally much, much shorter than books so not every book can be adapted into a single movie without losses.
It's a very interresting phenomenon. That said, I think the book/movie problem is a lot more complex. As she metioned you wouldn't finish a big book that's bad. If the book is good though, you might consider watching the movie. It's not a big investment in time to do so, even if the movie is not as good as the book. If you don't read a lot of books, or maybe are a slow reader, you wouldn't invest time reading the book after watching the movie. Amongst other reasons, you know how everyting ends. I actually think books kind of by default are better than movies. They will force you to imagine things, to invest in the story. You will spend a lot more time in that universe. You will have a lot more details.
so you're more likely to like a book after reading it than a movie because of various reasons (proportional time validation, effort required per medium, average critical capacity of the producer/consumer, etc.)
but then could you scale the axes to correct for that?
What I love about graphs and averages is how you can skew the data to show what you want. That graph about meanness vs attractiveness was somehow changed to niceness vs attractiveness. Stick super nice at 0 and complete A-hole at the top of the Y axis and the graph would look completely different.
I feel like trying to call diabetes and foot problems unconnected is definitely wrong in practice :)
well they're not negatively connected
Maybe when you don't have toes it's hard to have bad toenails...
True. Even ignoring ulcers and whatnot, the circulation issues mean their toenails are often quite bad unless they're amazing at sticking exactly to their treatment plans and all that stuff.
In the immortal words of Captain Novolin, “Check you [sic] feet”!
Hannah's heat would make the Sun melt.
"Alright diabetes" 😂
I love how things like this can be applied mathematically, and because of that, can be simultaneously applied to computer science. For example in big data. If we are aware of this trend and bias, we can attempt to correct for it.
"Very bad books never get made into films" ?
That's simply wrong. e.g. 50 Shades..
it's statistics. Plenty of *_notable_* exceptions
Also 50 shades appeals to an entirely different audience, which like it or not is the majority. In their eyes it's an amazing book.
The whole Harry Potter series, too.
Oh no, you didn't!
It is an amazing book. The only one I would use to fix uneven legs of chair. But seriously: FabledDan has a point and it should be point of most comments here - "smart" critics says the book is horrible, but many people love it - well, let them whip! I mean... Let them be! Individual taste matters. Lately sometimes the taste is shaped by critics opinion, which is quite pathological, tho :(
1:08 for anybody else wondering what anything at the beginning had to do with maths
Diabetics actually commonly do have poor toenails, so I think it’s a bad example. Diabetes often causes numbness in the feet due to peripheral artery disease and/or sciatica. People who can’t feel their feet don’t take as good care of them.
Please include the name of the theorem, paradox, etc in the title of description, so we can search for it later. Love the videos, thanks for the lesson. Much appreciated.
Hannah: "Books that are really bad don't even get made into films."
Me: "Twilight"
Damn, Hannah! Now I have to bid farewell to my long-held belief that books are almost always better than the movies.
I'm still reluctant to do so. TBH, I'm not totally convinced that it's legit to normalize the GR scores that much. If I'm not entirely mistaken, the true book scores would be a little better than what we see in the last diagram which would shift the picture and result in more cases of books better than the movie.
Anyway, super interesting video as usual. Hope to see more of Hannah soon. :)
*Stares at Hannah longingly*
"Probably not going to want to go out with you" :( I know
Doesn't the question require a minimum standard of sorts? Can you ruin a bad book?
If a book must meet a certain level of goodness, or at least popularity, to be considered movie worthy and ruinable then don't we need to be selective with the statistics?
If a bad book becomes a bad movie = Not ruined
Bad book becomes a good movie = Not ruined
Good book becomes a good movie = Not ruined
Good book becomes a bad movie = Ruined
If bad books can't be ruined, then shouldn't we be looking primarily at good books?
If good books are evenly distributed along movie quality then, by definition, most good books are ruined. A good book has a good score (say 7/10 and above), a Not ruined book requires that the movie gets a similar or better score. Everything below that is either ruined or just not an improvement.
Aren't we then required to look at that top right sector on the graph and say "Those are the movies that did NOT ruin the book, therefore, everything outside has been ruined"
If Ruined > Not Ruined, then Hollywood does ruin books.
Whoa, whoa there, Dr. Fry. Deathly Hallows pt. 1 is absolutely brilliant. Now pt. 2 on the other hand...
Up in the top right corner of the Good Movie/Good Book plot is The Shawshank Redemption.
Deathly Hallows: Part 1 was great. It followed the book almost perfectly. Part 2, on the other hand...
Captain Matticus Agreed. In general the books were probably better than the films, but Deathly Hallows Part 1 was fantastic.
I’d actually say it was the second best movie of the series in filmmaking terms, after Prisoner of Azkaban. But maybe that’s just me.
It really surprised me that the findings at the end were fairly, evenly scattered, because there are so many variables this doesn't take into account.
Amazing explanation of many real situations.
Hannah Fry! We love you ! 🤓❤️
Where does this 500-500 number work?
Yeah, sounds weird to give a local phone number to a global audience.
Tavin's Origami Instructions The answer is nothing
Count of Monte Cristo with Jim Cavizel is amazing btw
There’s a simple way to refute the whole “the book was better” argument.
*Fight Club*
But you're not supposed to mention it.
I think my brain would explode if Hannah Fry and Helen Czerski got together to make programs. Maths and Physics made interesting.
"Very bad books never get made into films."
Fifty Shades series: hold my outlier.
"And probably, they're not going to want to go out with you..." felt much more personal than it should have done... 😂
Can we substitute "Goodness" for "Quality" since that sounds less, after school special.
Glad to know I'm not the only one who was thinking this! Haha
And the Re-make of The Count of Monte Cristo was an awesome movie. Another one that I’ve not met anyone that didn’t like it.
The shining is the only one that is a 10/10 book AND a 10/10 movie fight me (or give me better examples i need stuff to read/watch)
The Lord of the Rings ;)
(No need for further explaination)
@@EngineerWhen I dont like the books but love many works by authors inspired by them. To each their own.
Rasmus Bertelsen
Fight you? ... well how about Fight Club ? ^^
The Right Stuff
A clockwork orange too
"Count of Monte Cristo" was my mum's favorite film, and as a result was very firmly entrenched in my childhood memories. I don't know if this counts as a counter-proof but there you go :D
There are countless (heh) movies of the Count of Monte Cristo.
For me Hannah is in the top right portion of the Attractiveness / Niceness graph.
This is an excellent point, but I do think there are still some causative factors to keep in mind. Many more people are involved in making a film than a book. There's a lot more potential for things to go wrong, at a causative level, rather than a correlational one.
One point I would argue against about this theorem, is that she considers "popular" = "good" and that is a fallacy in itself. Also, the "bad" section doesn't mean a movie didn't ruin a book in itself, it could have been a bad book, but an even worse movie, so to speak. Having said that, it may be the case a movie is more an enjoyable experience than reading its book counterpart, but enjoyable doesn't have to equal good neither. Fun video, nevertheless, as always.
I can’t believe you dissed The Martian like that
Hmmm... I wouldn't say Metacritic is a posher RT, but rather a more reliable source than RT? Does posher necessarily mean more reliable? Not sure as I've never used it in such context.
The TV show Episodes is about a related phenomenon. Two writers from the UK have a hit which gets picked up by a US network. The original is about the headmaster of an elite public school, while the American version ends up being about Matt LeBlanc coaching a school hockey team!
Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy film is quiet good :(
connorp3030 it’s loudly bad
I disagree very strongly
Always a fan of the Hannah episodes, host of my favourite podcast
I'm still sad about how they screwed up "Northern Lights".
That film doesn't exist. It's not a thing. Why would any sane person go to Svalbard before Bolvangar? They wouldn't. Grrrrrr.
Thank you for the educational video Hannah Fry! I disagree that Hollywood ruins books. It is rather that it takes a good directer to make a good adaption. Kinda like moving a house but placing the items in the correct place. Or moving houses and placing the parts in places that accentuate the house better