Do you know, having read the OPs post 25, I am beginning to agree that P P may be appropriate.

I'm beginning to lose the will to live. I think it is time I stopped reading this over the top arrogant drivel.

Gorlagon - this is an important point you are making here, and you have probably put it better than I did. If a person splits their votes between top judge ranking (already safe) contestants, and bottom judge ranking contestants, they might be denying their low ranking contestant the position they need to avoid the dance off. Effectively they would be wasting both votes, one is already safe anyway, and the other vote could have been wasted because of their vote for the already safe couple.


Again, I think that is the best plan when you are down to low numbers. I'll try and post probabilities every week for others who split their vote.

Voting for someone can be for two different reasons: to keep them in the show or to keep them out of the dance-off.

Have there ever been two "top of the leaderboard dancers" in a dance-off?
If not, then voting for someone at or near the top of the leaderboard is unlikely to make a difference to them staying in the show but it might make a difference to them staying out of the dance-off. Psychologically I can see it is a blow to know that they didn't get the votes (and a fan might vote to avoid that), but they are unlikely to lose the dance-off and it might also be a spur to them working harder and putting more effort into on-screen appearances. So the question then becomes: does it help or hinder a celeb who gets good scores from the judges to be in a dance-off in the middle or end run of the show?

Voting for someone at the bottom of the leaderboard is the only/best way to keep them in the show, because of the high likelihood of them losing the dance-off. So there is extra incentive to vote for the very bottom person, because it is pretty much their only chance. Has the person who came last on the leaderboard ever been saved in the dance-off?

Someone in the middle of the board who is in the dance-off would seem to still have a roughly 50/50 chance of surviving a dance-off, so unless you are really invested in them staying on the show, they are probably not the person most in need of a vote. Hence the "two middle of the boarders" in the dance off, as happened with Tameka.

I think it was actually at BT's request so their commercial rivals wouldn't know how much they were making for providing the service to the BBC from memory.
Certainly it was Ofcom which made the decision not to reveal information about the voting figures and that was one of the validations they gave for doing so.

Isn't this is all assuming that viewers WANT people's favourites to go through at the expense of better dancers ? I might want someone who I like, or find amusing, to survive a bit longer, but it doesn't really bother me that much.
Yes, it's annoying when you have a dance-off between two mid-table couples and the joke contestant survives. But that's always been the nature of the programme. The maths is interesting but I'll just continue to vote for the couple I find most entertaining or have moved me in some way every week. Anyway, have there been many terrible "injustices" in the past ? In all honesty, I don't think so. I've disagree with a few winners, but that's generally been the bloody public's fault.
I must admit. I've taken an irrational dislike to a few contestants in the past. But as you can't vote for who you want eliminated, any kind of tactical voting wouldn't solve that.

No, the person who is missing the point seems to be you. People don't give a flying f*ck about statistics. They vote for the couple who are their favourite. That criterion can range from because they appreciate a technically good dancer through to liking to watch someone make an idiot of themselves while having fun.

Where they come in the leader board generally isn't an issue, people are told to vote for their favourite and do so and that sometimes might be someone at the top of the leader board and it might sometimes be someone at the bottom or it could even be someone somewhere in the middle.

As there rarely seems to be a week without tied judges scores at the earlier stages of the competition, all the probabilities and statistics carefully worked out in the OP are meaningless compared to reality. So no one really is any the wiser when it comes to who to vote for, for saving purposes.

Best to stick to voting for whatever reason you choose.

Indeedy and if you vote in such a fashion then it cannot be a "wasted vote"

Thanks for the comments. You make loads of good points here.

However, one thing you say is actually untrue. It is one of those myths that has been allowed to build up. It was something I was trying to dispel.


Firstly it is VERY rare for two middle contestants (or higher) appearing in the dance off, except when the judges produce a load of tied scores. Normally, if they do appear in the dance off it is almost certainly going to be with one of the bottom three - there is a 90% certainty that at least one of the bottom three will be in the dance off. So unless the judges go against their original decision they made just a few hours earlier (overwhelmingly that is not the case), the middle ranks should be safe.

They are told many things. Every week this year Strictly has edited in statements from the celebrities on the lines 'no one is safe'. This has been every voting week this year, multiple times over the weekend. It has also occurred every year I can remember. Unfortunately, this is not true and one of the myths I was trying to dispel. The mathematics shows some contestants can get zero public votes and still avoid the dance off in literally all voting possibilities (99.9% plus) where they are getting zero votes. The truth is some couples are so safe they do not need a single public vote to avoid the dance off to an extraordinary level of certainty.

I did not realize trying to empower the voting public with a bit of honest mathematics would cause such anger. Just because you do not want to know the truth does not mean you should use intimidating language to stop others from hearing it. Now, I will post these probabilities each week. I will not be bullied.

So how do you explain the fact that I, and possibly many other people don't actually vote for a celeb but for a pro, regardless of who the celeb is and how well they dance.

Try that in your spreadsheet and see what it does to the figures.

You really do come across as pretentious I'm afraid.

BIB. Exactly, with a capital E!

I second that.

Thanks for the post, OP. I love statsy things like this

I will never understand why people bother voting for the couple at the top of the leaderboard. Complete waste of time (and money, if you vote via phone).

Oh, for heavens sake! Empowering the voting public? Who the hell do you think you are?

The voters on SCD do not need "empowering". They are quite capable of making their own minds up who to vote for without your arrogant, superior, condescending, supercilious, disdainful, pompous utterances. Spout as much as you like. It isn't going to make any difference to those of us who choose to vote as we please, without any mathematical mumbo jumbo.

Why are you so angry?

So much unnecessary aggression in this thread; I don't understand it.

OP laid out probabilities, nobody is forcing you to take the advice or make you vote a certain way. If you don't care for the stats, move along, no need to get all irate.

Because I cannot stand supercilious twits who think they know better than everyone else.

I'm with you!

I'm neither angry or bullying you but feel free to continue to post and have people tell you the same things you're hearing now.


Because they're voting for their favourite, it's fairly elementary.

Thank you!

^^^ Absolutely right.

I don't understand the aggression either. I certainly don't understand people calling the OP names. If people disagree, they can happily ignore as the OP is saying nothing hurtful about anyone. As threads go, this is relatively inoffensive.

Personally I just vote for who I feel like voting for. It costs very little time (I keep to the 3 votes) and no money. However, I still find the mathematics interesting (so yeah, those people saying so assertively that noone cares about stats are being presumptious since they do not speak for everyone). But it is like the lottery. The low probability of winning doesn't stop me from buying a ticket. It is of theoretical interest only for me.

The numbers behind your figures may be correct but the interpretations are not entirely correct. I'm equally concerned that you're the one who is misleading and you're the one who has opened a post to persuade people how to vote. I'm not telling anyone how to vote.

To be fair, your last long post used a lot tighter language and made less extravagant claims. It was still selective in its use of statistics but it made a reasonable case. Most people can probably agree that the top of the leader board is safer than middle of the public vote, which is what you now seem to be saying.

I'll put up some of my own figures in way of contrast. In the semi-finals there will be 4 couples. There are 24 possible ways that the public can order those couples with public votes. If there happens to be a tie on the judges leader board for second and third place then the bottom two of the public vote will be in the dance off for 22 of those 24 outcomes. In other words, the public will just have to vote for their favourites and ignore the leaderboard.