Harvard’s Ben Zauzmer picks Oscar winners based on statistics

A HARVARD statistics whiz, who predicted all the 2012 Oscar winners, has given his tips for Sunday’s awards based on maths — and there are a few shocks.

Michael Keaton as Riggan in BIRDMAN. Photo by Atsushi Nishijima. Copyright © 2014 Twentieth Century Fox. For National Hit only.

BEN Zauzmer, a Harvard statistics whiz known for picking more Oscar winners every year with his mathematical model, has delivered his forecast for Sunday’s ceremony.

Mr Zauzmer, who has a 75 per cent success rate from previous years, picked all eight major categories at the 2012 Academy Awards.

How does he do it?

Mr Zauzmer tells the Boston Globe that his algorithm uses thousands of data points from Oscar ecremonies over the past two decades, such as aggregate critics scores and other award show results to predict the winners.

“For example, in the best actor category, the British equivalent of the Oscars (BAFTA), the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), and a host of other organisations pick their winners. Often, these groups don’t all agree,” he said. “So, I use math to determine, based upon previous years’ results, how much we should listen to each group.”

This year’s predictions are set to produce some surprises if Zauzmer’s maths is correct.

He believes that favourite Michael Keaton will miss out on the Best Actor award for Birdman and that the Academy will give the nod to Eddie Redmayne for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. Redmayne is a 77 per cent chance, according to Zauzmer, while Keaton is lagging in second place with 13.8 per cent.

Julianne Moore is close to a sure thing (84.4 per cent according to Zauzmer) to pick up her first Oscar in the Best Actress race for Still Alice, with Felicity Jones her nearest rival back on 6 per cent for The Theory of Everything.

While Boyhood scooped the Best Picture award at the Golden Globes, Zauzmer believes Birdman will take the Oscar. He rates the Michael Keaton film as a 39.9 per cent chance of winning, while Boyhood is second at 21.8 per cent. He also believes that Birdman’s director Alejandro Inarritu will be favoured over Boyhood’s director Richard Linklater.

“Many smart people will pick Boyhood — it is certainly a remarkable artistic achievement, and it did win the BAFTAs and the Golden Globe for best drama. But Birdman claimed the SAG award for best cast, the Producers Guild Award (PGA), and, most importantly, the Directors Guild Award (DGA),” he said. “The last of those three has predicted 80 per cent of the last 15 best picture winners, so think long and hard before betting against Birdman.”

There won’t be any surprises in the supporting categories, however, as Zauzmer says award season darlings JK Simmons (Whiplash) and Patricia Arquette (Boyhood) will both take home another award for their collections this year.

So let’s see how accurate maths is in predicting the Oscars.