Interestingly, our user ratings reflected who American thought were the bottom two contestants this week, with Lil Rounds and Matt Giraud. However as of Thursday, Anoop Desai was considered the second-best performer this week, and yet still got sent to the bottom 3. No wonder he felt so disappointed this week.
Here are the performance ratings from this week’s episode:
Here’s an updated look at our Accumulated Performance Order (APO) metric after 5 weeks. Again, this is the sum of the performance orders each week (e.g. going 1st = 1 point, going 10th = 10 points, etc.). The higher the number, the more likely the contestant has performed near the end of the show, when voters are more likely to remember their performances.
Here are the APO numbers after the Top 8 Week (max APO = 51, min APO = 5, average APO = 26.5
Clearly, Adam has disproportionately performed at the end of the show more than any other contestant. Two things to note about Adam:
It’s obvious that Adam is the front runner in the competition. The question is, is he the front runner because he’s better than everyone else, or because his performances are easier to remember because they happened at the end of the show?
The answer is probably “yes”. As mentioned in a USA Today article last year, the performance order isn’t randomly chosen. In order to increase ratings, the producers may likely have placed Adam toward the end BECAUSE he would likely have given the best performance.
Here’s another way to predict the American Idol winner: see which contestant people a) search and b) post Facebook links/blog comment/Twitter tweet about.
The link mentions a book by Bill Tancer called “Click”, which basically studies search traffic to determine trends in various industries. This is yet another really interesting application of Internet data to help understand what’s going on in the world. In this case, it’s a frivolous thing like predicting the winner of a so-called karaoke contest (says Jimmy Kimmel).
Basically, they’ve anointed Adam Lambert the runaway winner. I can’t really argue.
http://www.pr.com/press-release/144854
In a previous post, I noted that the week’s eliminated contestant has never performed in any of the last 4 slots. (The rule was broken this week, when Scott got eliminated going 5th out of 8).
What if we looked at the bottom 3 contestants each week? With the exception of this week and Top 13 week (bottom 3 was never mentioned), you’ll see that the first performer of the night has ALWAYS been sent to the bottom 3!
Here are the bottom 3 each week, with performance order in parenthesis:
Top 11 Week
Top 10 Week
Top 9 Week
Top 8 Week
Clearly, the moniker “Dead Man’s Spot” is totally appropriate for describing the first performer of the night.
As the number of contestants dwindle, will performance order still matter? Based on this week’s results, perhaps performing in the MIDDLE, and NOT the beginning, will hurt the contestants the most. What do you think?
In the week that they were eliminated, the contestant has performed either at the beginning or toward the middle of the show. This definitely suggests that performance order matters in how people vote.
You only have 2 hours to vote right after the show, and it’s so much easier to remember the those who performed last than those who performed first.
Also note that the bottom 3 this week was Anoop (performed 1st), Megan (2nd), and Allison (4th).
Here were the performance orders of eliminated contestants during the week they got booted.
Here’s an updated list of our Accumulated Performance Order metric. To refresh your memory, the higher the score, the more often the contestant has performed towards the end of the show.
Poor Kris Allen always performs near the beginning of the show, at which point we’ve almost already forgotten his performance. Question: do you think APO or performance order matters?
One metric I want to track is something I call “Accumulated Performance Order” (APO). Basically, this sums the performance order of the contestants over the weeks. The higher the number, the more often you’ve appeared in the back-half of the performance order, and vice-versa.
After 2 rounds of the Finals, here are the APOs (out of a possible 24 points):
Matt Giraud got the last spot this week, and the second-to-last spot last week. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that being in the last spot is very advantageous, since you can remember the performance very clearly as soon as voting begins.
Worst of all is the first spot of the night, whose performance you can barely remember (unless it was amazing). Is it possible we say goodbye to Michael Sarver, given how early he’s been appearing on the show?