Originally Posted by VintageWhine:
“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 actually think the current system for ties is fair or at least less likely to be unfair than the old system.
Under the old system, the judges could doom anyone to the D-O simply by tying everyone else for first place. Although there's no D-O now, under the old system, if you end up with 1 point and everyone else get 10, then the only way to avoid the chop is to top the phone vote, which doesn't leave much chance if you're couple with 1 point. Thus, if the judges want to get rid of someone, they simply conspire to tie everyone else for first place.
Under the new system, the judges conspiring to tie multiple people simply gives the person at the bottom of the leaderboard more chance of survival, albeit at the expense of someone higher up more chance of getting the chop a la Jimi. So a "mass tie" favours the couple at the bottom of the pile, but if the judges want to favour them they can more easily just mark them higher.
I guess this logic breaks down if the judges want to both favour a couple (because they've been leant on) whilst being seen to be marking sensibly and having that couple at the bottom. I wonder which couple might fit this bill?
Having said that, avoiding ties and then insulting the couple at the bottom is probably a better way to keep them safe whilst maintaining what passes for judicial integrity on SCD.
