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Sifting through 50 years' worth of data, we visualised the factors that mark out the Best Picture winners from the losing nominated films in this long scrolling infographic.

What the data told us: winning films tended to be longer than nominated films, receive lots of other nominations including for Best Director and a writing award, and have won a slew of previous film awards that strongly predict Oscars success. On the other hand, no winner at Cannes has ever gone on to win a Best Picture award. Artiness is clearly a turn-off for Oscars judges. Release date has no effect on the odds of winning, and nor do critic scores on rottentomatoes.com – although audiences tend to mark down losing films. No one likes a loser.

Armed with these facts, we had a go at predicting the 2014 Best Picture winner - and almost got it right. (This version is updated to show the actual winning film, 12 Years a Slave.)

Design: Matt McLean. Art direction: Duncan Swain. With IIB Studio for BBC Culture, 2014.

Link to original piece [non-UK only]