Can some one tell me if the judges are going to be scoring the performances this year? I know it won't be counted as the public decides (which is a shame and can't understand the point), but do they score anyway?

Hope this helps

That is what I thought. The judges still have input but the ultimate decision is up to the public with no dance off.

This means Ann could get to the final if Anton makes a few jokes, or Paul could get there if he magics Ola's clothes off. Whoops, she's thought of that herself already.
Well, here's hoping.

Each couple's overall score is 50% judges' vote and 50% public vote, so it's not entirely up to the public.

Yes, that is what I meant. It will not be up to the judges to decide who stays or leaves though when the bottom two are announced.

Yup... I'm just not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing this year!

We are only going back to the system that was used in series 1 thru 4. The judges score and points are awarded so the weaker dancer will have to be more popular with the public to proceed through the weeks even though there is no dance off.

I know it's the previous system but the problem is the public does tend to vote for weaker contestants.

Why do you think that is?

The alternative perm of that is too horrific for words..........

Yes but thats happened every series since series 4............and the only reason many of the best female dancers got as near to the end as they did afterwards was the dance off saving them. Its just a fact that largely female audiences will vote for males, for some reason, more often than not and another fact that a large anti-Judge vote sloshes around for longer and longer in all reality talent shows.

Final 3s under the old system

Series 1 - Natasha (very good female), Chris P (highly entertaining bad male), Lesley (good female) granted probably the best female (Claire) was voted out too early but that was as much down to her personality as anything else

Series 2 - Jill (possibly the best female dancer ever), Denise (almost as good as Jill), Julian (highly entertaining male with a "journey")

Series 3 - Darren (the journey candidate who actually wasn't too bad in the end), Colin (one of the best male dancers we ever had), Zoe (very good female but suffered from "judges pet" syndrome)

Series 4 - Mark (another excellent male dancer who deserved to get to the final), Matt Dawson (the journey candidate - excellent at ballroom), Emma (good female but not as good as the judges tried to tell us she was, and suffered backlash for being favoured too highly and having mistakes ignored by the judges.

I don't think the public did a bad job with voting the right people through to the final stages. The bad judgement and thoughtless comments from the panel did more to ensure that those they marked favourably (even when undeserved) were dumped into the bottom 2 in series 3 and 4 - to be saved by dint of their high marks from the panel rather than the votes. There was never really more than one really "shock" elimination in those series. None of those who took early baths (with the exception of Claire Sweeney in series 1) were ever potential winners.

All the dance off did was encourage those who do bother voting to vote in their droves for the ones the judges ridiculed the most and not vote for the the judges pets. It seemed like the feelings were

"if the panel want to choose who goes, they can choose between two they like....." and in fact ensured that the duffers like Kate Garraway, John Sergeant et al stayed in a LOT longer than they would have ordinarily.

Let's hope that the panel this year stay a bit more objective and constructive in their comments and we may well see the right result each week

(Although..... I can see Ann and Anton being kept on for aaaaaages for their sheer comedy value - especially if the judges paste them!!)

Do we know whether they will still use last series' system for ties in the judges points or the previous system?

Not true - I voted for Jodie Kidd despite her never being the best dancer on the night and a lot of women both with and without dance-off last past their abilities dictate - Kate Garroway, Fiona Philips, Jan Ravens (for reasons I still don't understand), Georgina Bouvova and Claire King. A lot of supposed anti-female voting is women have a tendancy more to be over-marked and over-rated by the judges - Emma Bunton, Lisa Snowden and arguably although not by me Zoe Ball are prime examples of this. I'm not sure why this doesn't happen to men as much. There's also the 'unfair advantage' handicap - Emma Bunton, Rachel Stevens and Claire Sweeney both suffered from a feeling that they had previous experience so it wasn't a surprise they were good whereas someone from a sports background won't have had any previous experience learning a dance routinue.

It is also worth pointing out that even without the dance-off Zoe Ball managed to make the final and Emma Bunton would have got to the quarter-final (she did get the semi-final sort of on the strength of the very frist dance-off which learned a black mark from Louisa's supporters from the off). The judges's can ergo save some of their favourites without a dance-off just by scoring them highly.

Unless you remove the public vote entirely (which would make the ratings nose-dive IMO) then the public will speak and save the likes of John Sargeant and hand Lisa Snowden the red card sooner or late - all the dance-off really could do for her was ensure she made the final whipping up resentment from the fans of more liked contestants - some of whiich i.e. Jodie Kidd and Christine Bleakley were actually female too. I think a lot of people would much prefered Austin Healey to have made the final and it would actually have been more entertaining IMO. I'm afraid I would have seriously debated if I could be bothered to have watched the Rachel vs Lisa final the judges wanted to foist on us - although I think Rachel's rhumba and the will to see her truimph over Lisa would have won out - it would have been a close fought battle in my mind and I don't think I'm the only one whom would have felt like that.

The first dance-off wasn't the same as the one we've seen for the last few series. Whereas in series 5-7 the bottom two were decided on by the judges, the bottom two in the series 4 dance-off were decided on public vote. Emma beat Louisa in the public vote the week Louisa went out, and, as she also beat Louisa handily with the judges, would have gone through in any of the systems used to decide who goes home on Strictly. The dance-off as it was used in series 4 made it MORE likely that someone popular with the judges and not with the public went home, not less.

What they should do is not tell us what the judges have scored until after the public have voted. This would go some way to stopping the public voting for the bottom person as they feel sorry for them, which they very often do. (I do realise before someone says you can often work out who is bottom by the comments, but not always)

Not quite.

It's very unlikely that the public vote will ever result in two celebs having the same number of votes cast - whereas it is very likely that (two or more) celebs may well have the same score from the judges. As points are awarded on the basis of position, the net result is that any tied votes means that he Judges score will count for more.

Unless the have changed the rules for this series thats not quite correct........this is how the voting and scoring works.

the judges score the couples and then this gives a position on the leaderboard then this is converted into points so if there are 6 couples left then the couple highest on the board gets 6 points and the bottom 1 point (there is some change for matching scores) then the public votes.... the couple with the highest public vote gets 6 points and the next highest 5 points etc down to 1 which are added to their judges scores.......in the event of 2 couple getting matching scores e.g. 4 points from judges plus 2 points from public = 6 in total and 2 points from judges plus 4 points from public = 6 also then it is the couple with the HIGHEST PUBLIC VOTE that goes through not the judges highest.

I may have misunderstood what you meant by that......thought you meant that the judges scores count more than the public vote which isnt right.

Even without the dance off the weakest dancers can go home even though they may be popular with the public.......if they are constantly at the bottom of the judges leader board they can still be eliminated even with a high public vote in their favour it entirely depends on the scores and votes the others get above them on the leaderboard. .....on the other hand the best dancer can also be eliminated aswell. However being at the top of the board is a safer place than being in the middle which is always dangerous.

In all honesty there have been surprise exits from good dancers with or without the dance off (Spoony, Gabby, Zoe Lucker) & also weaker dancers lasting for a while.

Personally I would still prefer them to keep the dance off up to the quarter finals or whenever it is they start to do 2 dances & then abandon it. I think this would be a good compromise as it would mean less risk of good dancers going too early but also mean that the public have more say at the later stages which is as it should be. Under this format we would never have had Lisa being saved over Austin for example.

I agree with so much of your post and welcome whole-heartedly the decision to revert back to the original voting format.

Your analysis of Series 6 is spot on and one the OP seems to have overlooked: what would be the point of a final featuring two contestants who failed to engage significantly with the public? Rachel was technically great but that alone isn't enough to win Strictly - it's more than a dance competition; and Lisa was constantly overmarked and her failings overlooked to an appalling extent.

If the producers wanted to stop an 'anti-judge vote', then all they'd need to do is get the judges to tone down their critiques. However, my guess is that they are quite happy to stoke as much controversy as possible because they think that will get more people watching the show, so I'd expect the sympathy voting to continue.

There were lessons to be learned from Series 6 and giving the public back the power in what is, at the end of the day, OUR show (not the judges') is the right thing to do. I don't doubt a few better dancers may exit before Ann or Paul ... but at least they won't have been forced out by the biased judges.

Another Strictly maths thread...

I'm not talking about ties AFTER the judges scores have been added to the public scores - in those instances the couple with the highest public score is placed higher. I'm taking about ties BEFORE the judges and public scores are added together.

Here's how it works. You're quite right that the votes get converted into points which are given to the contestants in descending order. So, to take your example when there are six couples left - the total number of points awarded by the public are 21 (6+5+4+3+2+1). With no ties, the judges would be awarding exactly the same amount of points - but with ties, the situation changes. As an examples, let's say 2 couples are tied for 2nd place by the judges. The total number of points the judges will be awarding are 25 (6+5+5+4+3+2) - so 4 more points than the public. In this instance the judges have 54% of the vote and the public have 46%. So yes, the judges points count for more than the public - but only if there is one, or more ties.

The odds were stacked slightly more in the judges favour after the farce surrounding Tom Chambers in the 2008 semi-final. Prior to that the judges points for the example above would have been 22 (6+5+5+3+2+1). The scoring system was changed to ensure that no repeat of the 2008 semi-final mistake would occur again.

Using the amount of points the judges award to determine the proportion of power is incorrect, so long as the judges are forced to rank the couples at most one point apart. If they were allowed to distribute those points as they saw fit (as would be the case in a system where the judges scores counted proportionately to the result as they do in America) then that'd be right.

As it is that argument states that if the judges gave out scores in the order of 100-99-98-97-96-95-94-93-92-91 and the public 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1- they'd have 95% of the power. This is clearly untrue - they'd have exactly the same amount of power as they do now. Power lies in the standard deviation of scores, not the raw amount - hence the new way of scoring ties gives the judges less power, not more, as it forces less deviation.