The behind-the-scenes leaderboard bods are giving an unfair advantage to certain couples. It's impossible to tell which couples get the dis/advantage without knowing the public's placings, but it's not a level playing field.
Below is the list of the points given alongside a list of what they would have been given if they took into account their real place on the board (ie for example, there shouldn't be two points difference between Simon and the top scorer(s) because there are actually four dancers who have been judged as being better than him, so he should be given the fifth highest score instead of the third, etc).

Jake 13 13
Caroline 13 13
Frankie 12 11
Pixie 12 11
Simon 11 9
Thom 10 8
Mark 9 7
Alison 8 6
Steve 8 6
Sunetra 8 6
Judy 7 3
Tim 6 3
Scott 5 3

It matters because of how the final public placings are then added to the judges' placings- some people will have an extra point, or even two, which might lift them out of the bottom two. Obviously this didn't help Tim in any way, but it surely helped one or two others.
Someone, somewhere, mentioned that the judges could have decided on the placings of the tied couples after the show, eg giving Caroline 13 and Jake 12 etc, but I'm not sure the public would like that. But given that adding the two scores is important to the final outcome, it seems that the judges' scores carry more weight than the public's.

Yes at the moment the public vote is more important as it carries more weight than the judges votes (and also breaks ties). If a celeb goes out then it is not the fault of the mathematics but the will of the voting public.

I think this was brought in after the Tom Chambers fiasco.

All they really needed to do was not have a dance off with so few couples and tell their judges not to try to fix the results!!

Instead they introduced this rule which has its own problems as already described.

I think you're right on all 3 counts.
Doing it this (proper) way with so few contestants meant that the viewers votes couldn't save Tom from the DO

Great post OP! However, the last three in your list should be as follows:

Judy - 7 - 3
Tim - 6 - 2
Scott - 5 - 1

That is the standard way of scoring when competitors are tied - they both (or all) receive the higher score and the next score(s) are jumped over to compensate until the last score which , if a single person, should be 1. If you do it any other way then there is definitely an imbalance of scores.

The "fairest" way to do it, in terms of keeping the closest balance between the power of the public and judges scores is to average out. So :

Caroline - 12.5
Jake - 12.5
Frankie - 10.5
Pixie - 10.5
Simon - 9
Thom - 8
Mark - 7
Alison - 5
Steve - 5
Sunetra - 5
Judy - 3
Tim - 2
Scott - 1

This keeps the mathematical s.d of the judges scores and the mathematical s.d of the public scores as close as it's possible to without wasting time or opening yourself up to claims of bias and rigging by having the judges break ties. The old system undoubtedly gives more weight to the judges scores, and the new system gives more weight to the public. Neither of them was or is "fair", particularly.

As it is, personally, I'm happy with how it is. The boot order needs the occasional road-bump on the road to the obvious Final 4 to keep things interesting, and IMO mid-tablers like Simon and particularly Mark wouldn't be any great loss in the name of making the series more exciting or even particularly keeping the quality of dance high. If people vote for you, you will stay in, and that's what it should be about.

Who really cares? The crap ones are all leaving, and a couple of no hope mid table dancers have been in the dance off to create some drama for Zoe Ball to simper about on ITT. Its a win win situation.

Exactly ! I'm amazed that some people can actually be bothered to pore over, and work out statistics such as this ! Who remembers the positioning of the contestants on the leaderboard afterwards anyway - you just take it for granted, it's been and then gone. Your favourite is either at the top, in the middle or near the bottom, and that's it for most people.

Oh yeah- darn it!

You're on a forum and you're asking who cares? That's the point of a forum.

How about my third column

I haven't got any favourites and seldom have. But I never miss an opportunity to discuss statistics.

Spot on..in fact had the new fairer method been bought in before, then John Sergeant would have won hands down!!

Even better!

Like it.

Looks like Monkseal wrote the same thing in #7

Too polite to say so/great minds etc etc

Though I did write it unaided two or so years ago ...

Found it from almost exactly two years ago 28-10-2012, 23:28

http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showp...4&postcount=18

But no doubt Monkseal or somebody else wrote the same thing even earlier ...

There wasn't any need to change to , or keep, the new system before the SF stage .

Nor was there any problem with the logic that someone who came last with the judges and first with the audience didn't deserve to escape the dance off. The problem was voting for Tom was pointless - the only reason left for voting was to decide who was in the dance off with him.

The easiest way out was simply to ask the judges to resolve a tie any the top in the SF, or to make sure they didn't create one .

What they have done has just made it easier for the people at the bottom of the table to survive well past their use by date, and to make those mid field more vulnerable..

I... actually like the way it is now. SCD could almost do with more upsets at times.

The current system gives a hint more power to the public vote. Whilst that might not in practice outweigh the judges' votes plus the dance-off, I don't see any reason to restrict the public's vote power more. The bad ones always go eventually. It's fine.