edumacational - fun with binomial theory

[doyle]

I was posting a comment about this on icafreak's journal and I thought "it's maths! Random pointless maths! Who wouldn't love that!"

So anyway, I was talking about my love of odd pairings.

I'd love to have written all the possible pairings, even if it's only for a ficlet, but even just counting the major characters there are *so many*. (If we're talking Buffy, Willow, Xander, Giles, Dawn, Anya, Tara, Oz, Riley, Spike, Angel, Cordelia, Gunn, Wesley, Fred, Illyria, Lorne, Harmony, Doyle, Faith, Lindsey and Lilah - 22 people equals (22*21)/2 pairings. That's 231 pairings, unless my maths is shoddier than I think. And it would mean writing something like Lorne/Dawn or Giles/Lindsey...)

I'm sure I'm missing a major character. Connor! How could I forget my boy! And Andrew! Okay, add them. And Snyder, for swmbo. That gives us 25 characters. The number of possible pairings goes up to 300 (25*24/2). 300! I've got a long way to go before I've done all of them.

If our 25 characters are bored with twosomes then there's a gigantamous 25*24*23/6 = 2300 possibilities for hot threeway action. Okay, might be just a bit impossible to do them all.

The moral of this is: more randomness in our pairings is what we need. To start with, someone should write Cordelia/Dawn/Riley. Or, as icafreak suggested, Anya/Illyria.

Disclaimer: should be taken as an estimate only. I may well have screwed up the maths, in which case the mathematicians on my friendslist will point and laugh.

Comments

[jennyo.livejournal.com]

*giggle* What's disturbing is how Lilah? Is still the sluttiest. I'm all, "Hmm, Lilah/Devon...he opened for some indie band, they're backstage after a concert, he says she kind of looks like this girl he knew back in high school, he's the prettiest thing around, they get all bump and grindy..." and then "Lilah/Andrew: Andrew finally finds someone who likes to order him around as much as he likes" and then I laugh and laugh, because dear God. My character is a big ol' ho.

And the Devon/Lilah actually sounds kind of fun and plausible. God save me.

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

I have yet to see Lilah paired with Riley, Oz or Lorne. And all those would be beautiful in their own strange ways.

[jennyo.livejournal.com]

Ah, there are two Oz/Lilahs. Here's the category (http://notorious.imjustsayin.net/efiction/categories.php?catid=37&parentcatid=37) on Notorious.

I have not yet seen Lilah/Riley, and that would work. Lilah/Lorne is harder. It's in the tough category, but I'm sure there's some way to make it work.