Slashdot Mirror
Physicists Uncover TV Show Biases
Tsalg writes "Interesting to see what scientists can uncover from watching one of the silliest TV shows in Europe, where singers represent countries in a contest, and then countries vote for.. for what exactly? Well it was reported in a Nature article where the show was used as a barometer of European nations' feelings about their neighbours, that
Britain is in harmony with Europe, Nordic countries fancy each others' stars, and France is out on a limb."
The article was published on the 20th, which was one day before the yearly contest, making it a whole year out of date; the results were hardly surprising, though.
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
..like metric time and the Paris meridian?
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
Look, the reason you vote for culturally similar countries, is that you share taste in music with them. Obviously these former russian nations actually think they're sending something good. I for one think it's crap and I think the contributions from my neighboring countries are superior. Not because I somehow "like" these people, the music is just closer to my preferred style. There are some exceptions though, like the year Turkey won for example.
It would be extremely interesting to see the votes mapped onto a social relationships chart, if only to confirm the groupings and the weak bonds between certain members of groups to tie them to the others.
Doing some kind of statistical analysis based on previous year's set voting patterns and then removing their significance from the current result might actually give an idea of who was the best artist, contrary to the winner of the popular vote.
Business Voyeur
I can't believe that they actually had to study this to figure it out. It has been going on for years all over the world. This falls into the "Move along, nothing to see here" category.
/. news posting:
I can see the next
"SEC - Something isn't right at SCO"
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
Which is why Terry Wogan's commentary is so entertaining, and well worth a watch over dinner and a few drinks.
BTW this years winner was Greece and France were last...
rt
Just look at the statistics and you'd see the same thing:
:-)
Scoreboard, final
Scoreboard, semi-final
In this case, statistics don't lie. Or at least they agree with this report, so in that case it'd lie too.
For example, you'll see that Sweden got their two highest scores from Denmark and Finland and zero points from most others.
This is also commonly happening in eastern europe, and yet an example of it can be seen with Croatia and Serbia & Montenegro.
Voting on your neighbors has happened for a long time in the ESC so it's not news, and it's usually part as just a friendly gesture from the televoters and part because the countries have similar taste in music. Any watcher of this show would've noticed this fairly easily too.
Personally I think most music there suck horribly, and don't take the competition too seriously, although it's a bit annoying when friend voting go overboard and their top scores is given to a country that has some obviously extremely poor song. But then again, maybe it's just me having a culture collision and they honestly found it was good. Europe is so diverse in cultures that it's entirely possible.
It's kind of funny though; at least this time neither France or Germany seemed to get *any* friendship votes from their neighbors.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Which forefront are you talking about? The Revolution of 1789, which took place 14 years after the English colonies in North America had their revolution? Or when Napolean took over the Republic and abandoned it for another monarchy with his family in charge? Or when his son dissolved the second Republic and declared the French Empire? Or maybe you're thinking of the Vichy government's collaboration with the Nazis?
France is many things, but a model of how to run a liberal utopia it is not. It's a nation with as complicated, confused, and self-contradictory a history as any other. It deserves neither the unqualified praise you imply in your post, nor the unqualified derision it receives from the American right.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
Yes, one might also add that the show has gained such a status that actual music stars don't really want to perform there either. That part was a bit different before, with e.g. ABBA making their debut there with Waterloo, but nowadays it's mostly a freakshow, yes. :-)
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
"I makes me wonder exactly why we continue this ridiculous tradition"
Umm, because previously European matters of national pride (read "pissing contests") were settled (or not) with guns and bombs.
Stick with the dumb TV contests - fewer refugees that way, and it will allow Europeans to hold on to their self image as peaceful, war hating types.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
> (If I Was A Physicist)...
> I would find a more scientific subject to study, you know, that is actually related to physics.
The study shows a bias in the statistics, that such a system is not stocastic. This is a good lesson for any physics researcher. Do you think all physics is quarks and quasars? It's much more mundane than you may realize.
btw, my BA is in physics.
jfs
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
I've been to Cuba, and I loved going to Cuba. The people were wonderful - friendly, charming, and Cuban women surely give interested tourists the best welcome one would ever want :-).
But all I heard from citizens was gripes about the government. The "free" healthcare is worth about as much as you'd expect a dictator's promises to be worth. The capitalist things, like the taxi system, work gloriously. The hotels, being right under the government's thumb, are a model for poor service and bizarre rules. For instance, you can't take your Cuban girlfriend up to your hotel room without paying a bribe.
I read a lot of books on Cuba before I went, and it seems like people who go to Cuba with an ideological agenda are shuttled carefully to the right places, where things look shiny and new. This is a potemkin village that impresses the heck out of people who want to be impressed.
But if you go a few blocks away, you see scenes like I did. All these pictures were taken on what would be prime real estate in any other country, a block or less from the Malecon, the giant seawall that faces the ocean and is a major gathering spot for Cubans.
Cubans live in their decrepit and dangerous housing until it collapses, because if they maintained it the government would take it over and give it to someone else. No joke, sadly.
To put this slightly on topic, Cubans are generally not allowed to use the Internet, at least not at prices Cubans can afford. The Internet connections in the tourist hotels are closed to Cubans; only non-Cubans can use them. This is part of an effort to keep tourists on the busses and away from contact with the Cuban people.
The Cuban computers I saw were woefully out of date, with truly ancient versions of Windows on display. If my memory serves it was mainly Windows98, and I went in December 2002. So I doubt that this mandate from Castro will have that much effect. It's probably a propaganda effort to make Slashdotters look at his rule more favourably.
Even open source tyranny is still tyranny.
Alas.
D
I _am_ a physicist (well, not really any more but I have a physics degree) and I arranged specifically not to be at home when this was on because my gf wanted to watch it and I couldn't bear it. I went to the pub and had a few ales instead which is a much better idea.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
Yes, there is a good deal of "friendly" voting going on. The reason may at least partly be taste, though. Neighbouring countries tend to be very close, culturally and lingustically, people tend to meve between them a lot and can usually see each others television and radio broadcasts. So they will tend to have more similar taste in music than countries far apart. I would not be surprised if that is one part (not all, obviously) of the "bloc voting".
:)
As for your second point, why would the amount of money contributed to the EU correlate in any way with the popularity of the songs? Looking above, you'd expect the opposite, actually. A country is a large contributor because it's, well, a large country. And a large country tend (other things being equal) to be more insular and less influenced by the cultures around it. The songs will tend not to appeal as widely among its neighbours or other european countries as the smaller, more exposed, countries.
And yes, musically it's rather like a slow-motion trainwreck, but that's part of the appeal
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
The problem is that nobody takes it seriously. If they did, they'd pit their best singers and performers against each other. Instead (at least in the UK & Ireland) it's more like a talent show with the people choosing the least worst of a handful of songs to represent the country.
Just look at Ireland this year. They have the likes of U2, The Corrs, The Cranberries, Enya, Phil Coulter, Van Morrison and even *spit* Westlife. So who did they send to compete? Two nobodies - a 15 year old ginger four eyes and his sister to sing some dirge about "Love". The sad part is that they chose these two after a long running sub-Pop Idol kind of competition.
So naturally when the songs are so appalling, the votes are heavily slanted to their Euro-pals. This year the finalists were heavily Eastern European so the vote reflected that. The stalwarts like the UK, France & Germany finished miserably.
Another weird thing is observing how the songs from past years get ripped off in the following year's competition. Turkey won a couple of years back and you could still hear ripped off riffs from their entry even this year.
I thought it was Wogan but theres so many of them people (Bob monk house etc.) they all seem to merge and I didn't want to get it wrong.
But yea we're getting owned but that just proves Europe hated the war no?
I like muppets.
The Earth, in the United States where:
In short, we have a government who sees fit to pass a law (effective or not) as a knee jerk reaction to any problem, particularly "safety related" problems. Education, or personal responsibility, aren't options - citizens aren't capable of making smart decisions, the government must do it for them. (As an aside, can you even say how many laws affect you, much less what they all are?)
Nanny state.
And how the fuck would you know that? Have you seen every single broadcast? From every single European Broadcast Union member? Well done.
Hank! White!
I do find it quite funny that the four financing countries (Spain, Great Britain, France and Germany) all came in last. The smaller countries take it very seriously, one of their spokespersons even said it was "Europes finest event". This at a stark contrast to the UK, where we all think its a bit of a joke. Wogan is the only reason to watch, he's fantastic.
Perhaps singing in french damaged their score.
I not that Germany did the opposite by making a totally bland song in english where they sing about "dollars" - wtf?
Bush and Blair ate my sig!
You called it american REVOLUTION, and revolution as a word implies that rulers were changed, as well as the whole ruling system. This simply did not happen -- english king was not dethroned (or decapitated). It did obviously lead to part of the empire to declare (and win) its independence, but it was not really a revolution per se. I do agree in that the way this was said was unnecessarily hostile; it doesn't mean that the point wasn't valid.
Of course this is a common misuse of the word; and some americans apparently think they need to exaggerate scope and significance of the change. That is a pity, since the event in and of itself should be good enough -- it's the basis of independence of the USA, and probably the single most important thing for USians (and quite significant as a world event as well). Why on earth would one need to add anything to that?