According to a group of scientists, there is now a definitive answer to the ever-divisive question: "Who is the best character to use in
?".
Data scientists Henry Hinnefeld of the University of Illinois recently wrote a
, in which he concluded that Mario's long-running rival, Wario, edged out the competition for a number of factors (albeit by fine margins) - namely his size.
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According to Hinnefeld: "Unless you're going all-in on acceleration, it looks like a heavy character is the way to go; the two heaviest character classes (Wario and Donkey Kong) account for 11/15 of the
Pareto-optimal configurations."
Yep, if you thought this wasn't going to be proper data science, you are sadly mistaken.
Hinnefeld spends an entire section breaking down 'Pareto efficiency' - in short, situations where there is a finite pool of resources and multiple competing outcomes that depend on how those resources are allocated - and how they apply to the seemingly straightforward game of Mario Kart.
While there are other 'very heavy' characters like Bowser and newcomer Morton, the natural trade off is that they usually lack in other areas such a speed and handling. Let's just trust the stat man knows what he's talking about.
Using
fan-compiled data, he goes on to elaborate that "heavy characters are more versatile than light characters. While Wario's possible configurations can achieve about 77 per cent of the max acceleration, Baby Mario can only get up to 50 per cent of the max speed.
"Metal Mario/Pink Gold Peach are the only characters that have no configurations on the Pareto frontier" too, apparently - so swerve those two. He also revealed that "the Badwagon [kart] really is bad", insisting that "nearly every configuration on the ‘anti-pareto frontier’ (ie the worst possible combinations) involves karts from the Badwagon class." Noted, kind sir.
So there you have it: Wario may be a bad guy but it sounds like he's the best character to use in Mario Kart; as for the kart of choice, that all still depends on the track.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VbauWINt30
Hinnefeld's head operates on a different level to ours - we're not even going to try and comprehend his comparative analysis of configurations when it comes to that - but we'll happily start picking Wario and thanking him when we win.
Just joking. We still fully expect to go against all laws of science and defy logic by losing every single race whilst launching objects across the room and screaming expletives at young relatives whenever we play this Christmas.
Credit: Nintendo[/caption]
