Yes, that point was very interesting

We can at least agree that Brendan's face at the announcement is a classic Strictly moment!

Indeed. He looked like he was trying to cope with an attack of piles whilst being nagged by his Mother In Law...

I think Len and Bruno were predicting a shock result would be 'Anyone but Ann' ... when in actual fact the real shock result would, actually, have been Ann ...

How so? If they make no profit, and if they don't publish the voting figures (even to demonstrate how "popular" phone-voting is), I am at a loss to see how it is in their best interest.

I think you've muddled two parts of your argument here.

The viewing public get into a frenzy when "the wrong ones get through". So why would they still be phoning for Ann whilst simultaneously wanting "the joke to end" ?

How many people would argue for an end to the licence fee if prime-time BBC Saturday Night entertainment was boring?

If SCD finished, or was a purists Come Dancing Revival, you'd be sure as hell watching this forum full of complaints about "boring BBC One" and "axe the licence fee"

So having a popular (with the general, casual audience, not just dance purists) programme on BBC One is exactly the justification for Ann Widdecombe

But that has little to do with

it is still in their best interest to have as many of us invested enough to want to pick up the phone.

Indeed, it is a reasonable assumption that those who phone will be viewers anyway, so regardless as to the number who do vote (numbers that we are not told) the entertainment will be the same, the ratings will be the same. If the BBC wanted to capitalise on the phone vote, they would be publishing the figures and would be making an effort to big up and prolong the voting (over a day or a week) rather than getting it done & dusted over an hour or less.


Whilst you have a point in itself, I think that you are confusing two rather separate issues.

Quite, which is why I said "The "shock" exit wasnt actually a shock."


Because the show's success depends on audience participation.

10million+ watch, how many vote? Maybe the presumed importance of the audience participation aspect is rather over-egging the pudding? As I indicated earlier, if the audience participation was of great importance, then the BBC would be proactive in lengthening the voting time allocated.

I think that the success (especially this year) is more reliant upon the celebs featured and the format in general. Audience participation is at best minimal, except perhaps on a passive basis (people watch to see the results of the vote rather than to take part themselves).

But this is going further and further off-topic.

I shall quote myself again -


Whether we choose to pick up the phone on any given week is unimportant, so to is the time span allowed for the vote. Some people never vote, some people vote every week, some people vote in the final only, but every step of the way, the remaining contestants comprise of those chosen by the audience at home.

You may think I overestimate the value of audience participation but I think you seriously underestimate it. Put it this way, how many would watch if we couldnt vote at all?

I only know a couple of people who vote, and I don't know anyone who would support Ann!

Hi folks, this is my first post in a DS forum - I saw that people were talking about the scoring system, and couldn't resist joining in!

I contributed to the BBC forums last year (using a different name), mainly on this very subject and would judge the DS discussion here to be generally a lot higher in quality (hope you don't mind my saying this).

Last year, I couldn't understand why the BBC had chosen such an inferior system, and I put forward (to no avail, of course!) another method which was similar, but which was (usually) going to preserve the greatest differentiation between worst and best. Not that it matters now, but this is what it would have meant for Saturday's results:

Current system: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 5, 5, 4, 3

My system: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 3, 3, 3, 2, 1

Academic, now, with no dance-off - but WHY have the BBC retained last year's scoring system, when if they really had wanted to return to the original methods (as they have said), they would have reinstated the original scoring system? Which would have yielded the following:

Original system: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 5, 5, 2, 1

Maybe this was oversight, or maybe they realised they had in place a system which favoured the "joke" couples?

By the way, someone mentioned that the DWTS methods might be better. DON'T GIVE THE PROGRAM-MAKERS IDEAS! - there would be precious little to differentiate the top from the middle, from the bottom (especially with the judges scoring as they do - CRH excepted). What would happen would be that, not only would the middling couples be in jeopardy, but the top couples as well - so there'd be upsets galore (as has been demonstrated by DWTS results, seemingly).

On a slightly different tack, and not that this is something I'd want to happen, but I wouldn't be surprised if Ann makes it to the final (possibly winning??!), and I'm not sure that changing the scoring system would affect this anyway.
Last edited by VintageWhine : 10-11-2010 at 09:32

They still use that orignal system, the fact was that 3 people had the same score, so they all had the same mark. If for example Gavin go one more mark then Patsey who in return got one more than felcity, the scores woudl of been: -

Gavin - 5
Patsey - 4
Felicty - 3
Scoot - 2
Ann - 1

Just double checked on iplayer... scott got 4 points, ann got 3 so they're still using last years scoring system

Thank you. I am still trying to comprehend it all and I just cannot understand why it so complicated.

I think it's complicated because with 10 pairs left, there are 3,628,800 potential combinations of judges' ranking and phone vote ranking and that's before you start on ties!

Be thankful, though. At the start, there were 14 couples and 87,178,291,200 potential combinations!

Only 362,880 to think through this week, though.

My head's just exploded

Did you take your shoes and socks off your three left feet to work that out? If not, brilliant!

Maths ain't my strong point so please be gentle...but I see no need to have scores (or votes) converted into points, merely placings.

Even if two or more couples are tied (and even if ties occur in more than one place on the board) what is the likelihood of the public vote in isolation producing any ties as well? Surely then the aggregate of judge and public placings should result in overall rankings without any ties at the bottom, aside from some astoundingly unlikely fluke? (or am I missing something)??? And if it did then it could surely be agreed in advance what method of splitting them?

It's surprisingly easy...

There's 6 combinations with 3 couples (3*2*1)

24 with 4 (4*3*2*1)

120 with 5 (5*4*3*2*1)

etc.

A tie on the public vote would be very unlikely, as you'd need exactly the same number of votes, unlike ont he judges' vote where 3 of the judges basically only use the 7, 8 and 9 paddles most Saturdays.

Most people are not asking for a dance purists competition.
However there's a lot of difference between a strictly dancing comp and the addition of comedy acts with zero dance talent at all.

Well, you're absolutely right that placings are at the heart of the system, and, if you didn't have to combine a public vote with the judges placings there wouldn't be any need for "points".

But when there is a public vote to consider, you need to convert the judges' placings and the public placings into "points" in order to be able to aggregate them. And this would be totally straightforward, in the absence of tied judges' scores (you're right, the public vote is highly unlikely to yield a public tie - though the program-makers will no doubt (?!) have plans for this contingency).

Of course, all too often we do get tied judges'scores, so we need to know how to allocate points in a manner which is fair - and which preserves the power of the judges' scores.

I'll illustrate two possibilities using an extreme example. Suppose that on Saturday, nine of the ten couples got judges' scores of 30, and the other one got 16 (naming no names!). You could organise the judges' points as follows:

10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 1

or

10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 9

Now, in the first example, the range of judges' points is the full 10, while the second example is 2. Don't forget that the points represent placings, so in the second example we've reduced the number of placings to 2. I hope you can recognise that this has reduced the power of the judges by a factor of 5, and the result of the aggregation of judges' and public scores will be almost totally biased in favour of the public. And all because of tied judges' scores.

Unfortunately, it is the second method which is currently being used (because it's a hangover from when there were dance-offs - but that's another story). They should be using the first method, of course.

I mentioned the DWTS methods, and these don't have the concept of placings, just using the judges' scores and public votes. This sounds great in principle, but only if the judges' marks are as widely differentiated as they should be (i.e. using the full range from 4 to 40). And of course, they're not, and this effectively ends up with reduced judges' influence over the end result, and so would be a recipe for disahster!

By the way, in the event of a tie after aggregating judges' and public points (i.e. placings), the public vote wins the day.

I've just seen my last post "in the flesh", so to speak, and it doesn't 'alf look daunting! (It's not, actually.)

Please tell me if I'm being boring (or if I'm being helpful, I suppose).