The stats geeks at Deconstructing Sundance aim to be the FiveThirtyEight of the film festival world by predicting the future box office success of Sundance films, using the words in their festival guide descriptions (and a Bayesian algorithm) alone. Example: 62% of Sundance competition films in the last 15 years whose descriptions included the words "gay," "gays," or "homosexual" went on to commercial success. So "gay" becomes a positive indicator of success, and so on and so forth. more ›