Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Physicists Uncover TV Show Biases

Posted by Hemos on from the the-joy-of-statistics dept.

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."

2 of 435 comments (clear)

  1. Lalah by Turn-X+Alphonse · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Watch the UK broadcast of it if you can get hold of it. The "host" has been doing it for years, he always comments on it and points it out every time people vote for "friends". It's been that way for years and always will be.

    Hell it's the best reason to watch for us in the UK. The back handed comments rock.

    --
    I like muppets.
  2. Distance-weighted adjustment by Bazman · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Last year I computed a distance-weighted adjustment of the Eurovision scores, on the basis that if you voted for a country far away from you, you must have really liked the song since its cultural attachments to you are weaker than a song from your neighbour. So if you like faraway songs they must be really good, and hence worthy of more marks.

    I got a map of Europe, used the locations of the capital cities as surrogate coordinates, computed the distance matrix, and reweighted the score from the Eurovision website to adjust for this.

    Here's the top 5 from my adjusted list (left) and the original list (right):

    cyprus 280 ukraine 280
    ukraine 273 serbiamontenegro 263
    greece 263 greece 252
    turkey 245 turkey 195
    serbiamontenegro 199 cyprus 170

    So Cyprus jumped four places by my system into first place!

    I should have cranked this system up again for this year, offered it to the TV companies, profit!!

    The big irony is that I had a proper scientific paper (on malaria prevalence) REJECTED by Nature this year, and then they produce this fluff! Gah!

    Baz