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

[jedi-penguin.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about this, and you would go nuts using every recurring character. But every character that ever appeared in the opening credits, even if only once? That should be doable.

First season: Buffy, Xander, Willow, Giles, Cordelia
Second season: add Angel
Third season: add Oz
Fourth season: add Riley, Spike and Jonathon (only one episode, but he's in there)
Fifth season: add Anya and Dawn
Sixth season: add Tara (again, only one episode, but...)
Angel season one: add Doyle and Wes
season two: add Gunn
season three: add Fred and Connor
season four: add Lorne
season five: add Illyria and Harmony

Unless I'm missing someone, that's 21 people, thus 210 pairings. Yes, that takes out popular favorites such as Lilah and Ethan, but it's a doable spread. If you got seventy people to take three pairings apiece (each ficlet no less than 500 words), it would be done already!

_{do it, do it! You know you want to do it}

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

Ooh. Now there's an idea... I'm probably going to end up doing that. (although this weekend I think I'm going to issue the 1000 pairings challenge, mad as it is. I'm dying to see what kind of couples people come up with)

[jedi-penguin.livejournal.com]

Hee! Can't wait! Though sadly I won't have too much play time this weekend, so perhaps I should get started early... *grin*