So which movie has the best chance of winning the best animated feature Oscar, and does any film have a lock on the documentary feature trophy at Sunday night's 91st Oscars?
In yesterday's article, I announced percentages for each nominee in the eight most prominent Oscar categories: best picture, best director, the four acting awards and the two screenplay awards. Those are the categories that people pay the most attention to.
In the final two portions of my eighth annual Oscar predictions, we arrive at the categories that draw less attention, which has a number of implications. For one, there are fewer precursors, making some of them harder to predict. Two, math is arguably more important in these categories since there are fewer indicators pointing the way, so we need to handle each one correctly. Three, and perhaps of most interest, these are the categories where Oscar pools are won and lost.
I make no promises that these percentages will help win your Oscar pools; upsets happen every year. But if you'd like to know who the mathematical favorites are before making your picks, this is the article for you.
Tomorrow: Film Editing, Visual Effects, Costume Design, Makeup and Hairstyling, Sound Mixing and Sound Editing.
Ben Zauzmer (@BensOscarMath) uses math to predict and write about the Oscars for The Hollywood Reporter. A Harvard graduate with a degree in applied math, he works as a baseball analyst for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
