A maths professor works on the problem of extracting details about the public vote from the limited information disclosed.


http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/maths/2015/12...ent=1450441096


Nice to see an esteemed academic working on something of real importance for a change.

My eyes glazed over about a quarter of the way in but the maths bods will love it!

Thanks for posting

As a mathematician, can I just marvel at the inclusion of the integral sign in the thread title! QED!

It's called contextualised teaching

Read it all through, but it wouldn't fit on the back of my envelope.

But it does prove one point: the voting system is not about the dancing at all but about keeping the viewing ratings as high as possible.

quod non erat demonstrandum, but is pretty interesting anyway.

The esteemed Professor was scoffing at the odd scoring system for ties - does he not know the Tom Chambers debacle?

The Tom Chambers débâcle? Nope, that was in the other textbook for the lecture next door.

Ah yes, in a class more advanced than 1st year undergraduate linear programming.

Thank you. Good read.

An overly complex way of representing simple mathematics. The estimate in section 3 is an estimate but probably not an accurate estimate in any way that we would imagine. It assumes that all outcomes are equally likely, when in fact we can look at the dancing and see that some outcomes are less likely than others. That maths can't distinguish between a Jay and an Iwan. Section 4 uses the estimate in section 3 and so has the same weakness.

Can't comment, except to say I don't understand a word of it

Love that all the emeritus professors work is dissed by saying "yeah, its Jay v Iwan"
(And I was lost a couple of paragraphs in anyway)

So now we know!!!

The emeritus professor isn't wrong, he just makes an assumption that makes his results rather academic "On the assumption that the 44 possibilities are equally likely, we can make an estimate". By all possibilities are equally likely, he means it is equally likely for Iwan or Jay to get any number of votes.

It's easy peasy. You can also represent Option 3 by the following:
00110101 10101111 00000001 2244264**/§
(the last bit is Jay sprinting the 100 metres in 9.86 sec)

"It is also shown that the peculiar method of producing the judges’ points, which might at first sight be thought to provide them with extra voting power, can actually make it less likely that their preferences will prevail. "

I'm not at all against rigorous mathematical analysis, but hasn't it been bleedin' obvious from day1 that the post-Chambersgate points allocation system has increased the power of the public vote when there are tied scores?

Some people actually like that unintended consequence. I don't.