Read the title.

If you vote for whomever you want to vote for, then it ain't wasted.

But what happens when your second favourite leaves the show because you gave a vote to your favourite who was already safe and did not need your vote, and this denied your second favourite a public-rank score that was needed to save them? The crazy thing is a public second favourite who is unpopular with the judges can leave the show, especially when one or a few of the judges' favourites rank well with the public.

Why would I have a second favourite.
I bung all nine free votes to Anastasia.
The rest I don't really bother about.
Not even sure if I'll keep watching after she is put out.

I wrote this incorrectly. It should read:

For example, in the 13 couple week, the judges' favourite when uniquely ranked will only have a 1 in 1.5 Million chance of being eliminated. In that 13 couple week the judge favourite can get ZERO public votes and only appear in the dance off in a 1 in 100,000 chance. That is extraordinarily safe.

People generally don't care that much to be honest. You have to remember the people posting on this message board are a miniscule minority of the millions who watch the show. Of those watching, a slightly larger minority will actually bother to vote at all.

Thanks for the explanation for the mathematica B_OR.

I think the mathematical analysis is more of an interesting tool for trying to predict results, or to look at how a couple has been performing in the public vote (actual against calculated probability of surviving). I don't think I would ever use it to guide my vote.

The BBC have said they never reveals the numbers of votes received, let alone how many for each contestant. That comes under "Sensitive commercial information which might be of benefit to a competitor." I read into that, they don't want you to know how few people actually vote compared to the ratings numbers, or they'd be bragging about it.

Only once did you get a chance to work it out, when in one year they revealed how much CIN had made from the contribution made from the cost of each phone call. I think that year you could vote for a whole week and as many times as you liked. I remember working it out, but I've forgotten how much it was. It was a substantial amount of money, but when you think about it, given there's no charity element and a limited time to vote, then I guess the numbers won't be that impressive now.

That is really interesting Doghouse.

The disturbing thing is, if that is true, then it could just be 1 or 2 votes that ultimately decides which celebrity leaves.

What I have learnt from doing all this maths is it is not the public popularity that ultimately decides which celebrity goes, but the order of the minor ranks in the pubic vote that could be receiving comparatively no votes whatsoever.

That means the public favourite could be getting thousands of votes, and just a difference of just one or two votes for a low ranking couple could mean that public favourite has to leave the show.

It does not seem fair to me.

It is a bit like Eurovision. For the last two years the public favourite, even a landslide public favourite that received millions of votes, much more than the official winner, was incapable of getting higher than third in the official result. In a typical year many songs have been predecided as being all-but incapable of winning the contest at the point of the public vote.


If they released it as a percentage, surely that is not sensitive commercial information.

Eg Ed Balls got 50% of the vote, Danny Mac 30% etc. That does not give any indication how many votes have been cast.

Apols for the snip.......but with regard to this part of your post

I believe it has been said, or speculated about, that if they released figures, even if those figs were percentages rather than the actual number of votes, it might still be a problem....
ie; if one celebrity is seen to be getting a very small percentage of the vote, whilst all the others are getting reasonable totals, then this might deter celebs from taking part in future years, as they would not want to be seen to be so unpopular.

Yes, I could understand that. But it seems very unfair to the public that the voting system is so skewed in favour of the judges rankings that a public favourite receiving potentially thousands of votes can be eliminated just because two low public ranking couples differed by one or two votes either way. The public are surely entitled to see if their votes for their favourites are having any credible effect?

This^^^^^^

I also recall reading on here some years back, a poster saying that for the final, her OH and his mates come back from the pub, (a bit pi**ed) and vote, having never seen any of the earlier shows of the series at all. If there is much of that going on across the country, then the result is truly random!

Celeb egos have a deal to do with it I think.

You could vote all week, as many times as you liked, all through the Charity years. The phone lines opened almost before the last dance strains had died away.

I remember Darren Gough saying (possibly in his book?) that he was so far ahead on the voting through the week, he could have virtually come out on the final Saturday, stood in the middle of the floor and not moved (or, indeed, danced with dummies) and stil, won.

BIB : I wonder if Darren made that remark within earshot of Erin Boag and she misunderstood - hence the way that final eventually went!!!!

Any couple can be put into the dance off by a small margin of difference in the public vote. Similarly any couple could be put into the dance off through the judges marking one point differently, not necessarily a mark for that couple either. This all holds true for the judge's favourites, public's favourites, and the couples that nobody much likes at all. That part of the maths is not biased for or against anyone!

The part of the system that benefits the judge's favourites is the dance off. It's obvious though that the judges will favour their favourites in the dance off and it shouldn't change anyone's votes.

The public have a variety of advantages such as seeing the judges scores before they vote, the public vote breaking ties, and ties in the judges marks acting to lower the weighting of the judges marks.

That is not completely true because, as many people have remarked on this board over the years, the judges do not use their full range of marks.


I agree the dance off is the nail in the coffin for the public favourites when it is at odds with the judges' opinions. Think of it this way. The judges' marks makes it difficult for the bottom ranks in that leaderboard to avoid the dance off even when they get high public support, even being public favourite. The dance off ensures that most public favourites that are at odds with the judges' opnions are unlikley to last until the final. This voting system ensures the judges will predominantly construct the make up of the final, even possibly removing the public favourites along the way.

So I disagree with your last sentence. The severely skewed system in favour of the judges must change peoples' votes. The public should seriously consider not voting for a couple if it is one of the judges' favourites IF they also have a favourite at the bottom of the leaderboard. They should put all their votes on their favourite bottom ranking couple, otherwise their vote for the top ranking (and already safe) couple could be the vote that denies their favourite at the bottom the chance to avoid the dance off.



This is a silly thing to say, especially after what you said about the dance off. The dance off has massively more significance on who is eliminated rather than the tied scores.

Also remember, to get first place in the public vote could mean having to have 1000s of votes if it is true what some have said about low numbers voting. If the winner is getting 1000s of votes, then the 8th, 9th or 10th in a 10 couple week will be getting about 10s of votes, maybe 100s of votes at best. That is how these popularity votes typically work. So effectively you are saying just a handful of public votes which determine the order of the bottom ranking public votes could be overturning the 1000s of public votes that voted for the public favourite. It is a crazy system.

Of course it is, it could be a lot fairer, but it would involve the BBC revealing the percentage of the public vote for each couple.

It's not going to happen.

This comes up every year and we explain that the BBC don't want any "bruised egos." It'd be devastating for some, to find out how relatively unpopular they are compared with other contestants.
But for the BBC, it's more an entertainment show, than a true competition.

"Probably the reason why they don't have random drug tests through the series."

Or rather, she totally understood and thought fekk the lot of you!

You keep saying this but it is even more difficult for the bottom ranks in the public vote to avoid the dance off. Top of the public vote is less likely (in terms of counting possible outcomes) to be in the dance off than top of the leader board. Leader board ties make it even more likely that public's favourites go through.


Your maths might start with the correct numbers but you are selectively using statistics to make a false argument (see above). Just repeating that the system is skewed doesn't somehow make your dodgy statistics correct.


Time for the Churchill quote. "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others."

I vote for the couple who have entertained me the most. Not always the same every week. I don't need any advice or help from you thank you very much

Dear B_Or,

Statistics, and Probability, are two COMPLETELY different things. They have about as much in common with each other as Suduko & Orienteering. Attempting to combine the two is generally regarded as the quickest & easiest recipe for producing a barrow load of nonsense. (or getting lost in a puzzle book...)

Whilst I salute your (assumed-to-be) genuine & well-meaning efforts at showering your little nuggets of 'insightful' advice upon the unwashed masses, I cannot help but wonder if you've ever considered a career in window-cleaning?

Cheers!

"When you know everything, you understand nothing"

I wouldn't - and couldn't! - go to the effort of working out the probabilities to this kind of nth degree, but I do think there is a sensible principle in here and I do use it to vote, at least in the early weeks.

While there are still a large number of contestants in the competition and I like several of them, I would not vote for my number one favourite if they were top of the leader board. I would vote for my second, third or fourth favourite - whichever I perceived to be in the most danger. And I wouldn't spread my three votes either: I'd pick who I thought was most endangered and send all three votes their way.

This year, under this method, I've tried - and failed! - to save both Tameka and Lesley. You never know: they might still be in if others who would have liked to see them for a few more weeks hadn't voted for their own, not-in-danger, absolute favourite.

Once we get down to fewer contestants, I vote for my number one favourite (I think this year, it will be Danny, much to my surprise because I didn't think I'd like him).

To the OP.

Some FMs, by their own admission, cannot understand (or more likely cannot be bothered to understand) the voting strategy you have detailed.

Now, we all have strengths and weaknesses, and I happen to be very strong on maths, and absolutely useless at geography.

So I actually understand what you have stated. But do I want to know? Can I be bothered with such stuff? NO!!!

SCD is a combination of dancing and entertainment. We all love to ooh and aah when someone who probably shouldn't be there ends up in the dance off. This is all part of the enjoyment. Once we start to apply scientific formulae to our voting, we really are losing the plot IMHO.

Correct me if I am wrong but you seem to be suggesting that every possible ranking is equally likely. This would suggest that voters are voting completely randomly with no reference to the actual performances or the judges' scores.

In actual fact there will be two competing pull factors on the public vote. People will vote for the people they like the most (which may or may not have some correlation with dance ability) but also for people they are afraid will be eliminated (which is likely to be inversely related to dance ability).

Experience shows that a dancer with high judges' scores who the public don't like can easily be pulled into the dance off (e.g. Denise Van Outen) making a mockery of these percentages.

DaveGold, you are entirely missing the point. First, these statisitics are correct. Your argument about tied scores is a red-herring and misleading. It is the dance off that causes the major problem. I am really concerned you are trying to mislead people on this forum.

At the point of the public vote the judges have effectively told the public that for a bottom ranking couple to avoid the dance off they are going to have to be one of the public's top ranks. If they are under a middle public ranking contestant (or even a higher ranking couple in many cases), they will be in the dance off and the judges have already said by their judge score they want them gone.

However, for the judges' top rank to avoid the dance off they can get any public rank and still avoid the dance off. The only case where they do not avoid the dance off in the 13 couple week for example, is 1 case in many millions when they are second from last, and a 1 in 100,000 probability cases when they are dead last with the public, possibly getting no public votes whatsoever.

The problem comes when a member of the public is voting for the judges' top rank and also voting for the judges' bottom rank, as many on this forum claim they do. They would be shooting themselves in the foot and possibly wasting both votes.

To explain simply with celebrity examples. Ore almost certainly could have even come last with the public getting no votes and survived last week. Ed needed to be in the top half of the public vote to have a chance of surviving. What if Ore (an already safe contestant) achieved an un-needed top half public rank that pushed Ed down one place shy of the top half public ranks. Even though Ed would have been scoring reasonably well with the public, probably getting more votes than many right at the bottom of the leaderboard, he would have been chucked out.

In that case that member of the public would have wasted their vote for Ore, because they were already safe to an extraordinary level of certainty. Also, they could be wasting their vote for Ed, because they used one of their votes to assist Ore to gain a public ranking which could ultimately deny Ed the high public vote ranking they needed to avoid the dance off.

Also the other issue you will not address. In the extraordinary event that Ore did find himself in the dance off, an almost improbable event, the judges are going to save him with almost certainty. If Ed ever finds himself in the dance off, which is about a 50% chance, even possibly when he is the public favourite, he will almost certainly go because the judges have already expressed their displeasure at his dancing.

So please davegold, do not try and mislead the readers of this forum by saying the skew in the vote is not important. My statistics are not dodgy. Your statement, 'Top of the public vote is less likely (in terms of counting possible outcomes) to be in the dance off than top of the leader board', while true, is a shameful way to try and convince people this vote is fair, because it is at the periphery of probability.

Simply put, if their judge rankings remain steady. Ore does not need a single public vote to survive for many weeks. Ed repeated has to be in the top half of the public vote to have a chance of surviving. The second that fails, he is almost certainly gone. What if a person had voted for Ed and Ore, but the skewed system and their vote for the already safe Ore denied Ed his top half public position he required to avoid the dance off. Both votes would have been wasted due to the skewed system.