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American Idol - judges' votes

January 29, 2008

Does anyone keep track of all votes made by the judges in American Idol TV show? It seems it would be very interesting to apply some statistics to find out some patterns. This ocurred to me when in the present season, Paula Abdul voted "no" when both Simon Cowell and Randy Jackson voted "yes" for one candidate in Dallas. I couldn't remember whether this has ever happened.

I came up with the following hypotheses:

  1. - Simon's "yes" vote is a good predictor of acception unanimity - if he votes "yes", everyone else will likely vote yes.
  2. - Paula's "no" vote is a good predictor of rejection unanimity - ig she votes "no", everyone else will likely vote no.
  3. - Randy's vote is very correlated with Paula's vote. They have a tendency to vote the same.
  4. - The order in which judges vote affects the final outcome.

Of course, what is aired is only a subset of the whole show and surely biased by th editor to smooth any prejudice or repetitive pattern. I don't know how to take that into account. But nevertheless, is there anyone willing to watch all seasons again and account for every vote? :)

ricardo at 11:12 AM :: ::
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