DWTS Stat Class: What’s Running Order Got to Do with It?
With 10 seasons of DWTS behind us now, we’re at an interesting place – we’ve got enough data and scores at our disposal to do some interesting statistical analyses of the show. Ever wonder if there’s any interesting patterns in scoring, running order, dance selection, or even pro pairings? Well, wonder no more – because we’re about to run those numbers, and bring some surprising patterns to light…I like to call it “DWTS Stat Class”. 😀
Here’s an interesting fact: out of the 83 regular, weekly eliminations (not counting elims that determined placements in the finals or withdrawals from the competition – the math just gets too tricky with those) in the 10 seasons of DWTS, only 39 of them were couples that were that week’s lowest scorer – roughly 47%. So what does that mean? Well, that the other 53% of the time, some factor other than a low score resulted in a couple getting sent home. While the obvious answer to some might be “Well those couples just weren’t as popular!”, there’s no scientific, finite way to measure popularity on the show, and we unfortunately aren’t privy to the vote counts for each couple. However, there are other factors we can take an objective measurement of – running order, dance choice, even the pro you’re paired with…and that’s where some interesting stats pop up.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a professional statistician, nor am I a Vegas sports bookie – I am well aware that these calculations are not perfect, nor are they particularly sophisticated. There are simply too many variables to account for in order make these stats “airtight”, and quite frankly, I don’t have the time or the desire to try. These are just general observations, to be taken with a grain of salt – so if anyone starts complaining in the comments about this not being “scientific” enough, go run the numbers yourself…I’ll even publish your findings on this site. But you don’t get to bitch & moan if you can’t do better yourself. Mmmmmkay? 😉
Today’s topic? Running order. The question: is it possible that the order in which the couples dance on performance night can affect their odds of elimination that week? The answer, based upon my findings: sure seems like it.
Some of you have heard me talk about the “money spot” (dancing last) or the “crap spot” (dancing first) in my power rankings – my general observation is that those who dance last are less likely to get sent home, as their performances are fresh in the viewers’ minds when they’re voting after the show; those who dance first are more at risk of getting sent home, as an entire show’s length has elapsed since their performance and they’re often forgotten by the voters.
Well, after taking a closer look at the running order of eliminated couples, it seems as though the numbers are consistent with my first hypothesis – only 3 out of the 83 eliminations were couples that had danced last on performance night (or one of 2 performance nights, if there was no elimination previous week, so the couples would have danced twice before a particular elimination); it may also be worth noting that two of the couples, Joey McIntyre & Ashly Costa and Ty Murray & Chelsie Hightower, were also the low scorers that week (and both were eliminated in the semifinals, when scores are of greater importance) – so their departure may have had more to do with a low score than the order in which they danced. Based on that, it seems to me that, unless a couple does exceptionally poorly any given week, if they dance last – the chances of them getting eliminated that week are slim to none, unless it’s one of the final weeks of the competition. Guess if you’re a couple having an off-week, you should hope and pray that you get to go last!
As for my “crap” spot hypothesis about going first – I was wrong. Only 11 out of 83 eliminations were from couples that had danced first on performance night (or, again, on at least one of 2 performance nights, if there was no elimination the previous week and the couples danced twice before an elimination). That’s only about 13.25%. However, there was an overwhelming percentage of eliminations for couples who danced 2nd in the running order during the week they were eliminated – about 30%, by far the greatest of all the running order positions. And this was regardless of how many couples total danced that week! Of those, only 9 were actually the lowest scorer during the week they were eliminated – so maybe the other 16 were part of the “curse of #2”. I guess it makes sense to me – if you go first, you’re still at least the first one viewers have seen, so they’ll likely remember you because of it; but if you go second (or anywhere in the middle of the pack), you’re more likely to get lost in the shuffle. A good example of the new “crap spot” in action – Shannen Doherty. Poor girl got a pretty lousy draw in the running order lottery – she danced 2nd in week one, and 1st in week two…overall, a pretty hard combo to overcome, which may have had something to do with her getting sent home despite not being the week’s lowest scorer.
So what about the “middle of the pack” positions, you ask? Well things get a bit tricky there, since there hasn’t been the same number of competitors each season, so I’m not going to go into the details of positions 3, 4, 5…etc. However, two interesting points: one, no one who has danced in a position greater than 10th in the running order in a given week has gotten sent home; two, over 70% of the eliminations have been couples who danced in the first half of the show the night they performed. What can we extrapolate from that? Well, it seems like the closer your performance is to the end of the show, the better – if you can’t go last, at least you can hope that you perform in the second half of the show, because it seems a helluva lot safer than dancing in the first half!
Here’s another interesting tidbit, which I already sort of touched on above: the closer you get to the end of the season, the less running order seems to matter. At about the halfway point in each season, the patterns I’ve mentioned above seem to show up less frequently – and couples tend to be sent home based more on low score than anything else. Why? Probably because it’s easier to get lost in the middle of a big group of couples (such as the first half of the season) than it is to get forgotten in a much smaller group (second half of the season). The fact that people have already established their favorites and know who the strong couples are by the middle of the season may also play a role – the second half of the season really seems to separate the men from the boys (and the women from the girls!), so to speak, and actually giving good performances with high scores tends to matter more.
So what can we conclude about running order, class? 😉
Well, we can’t really conclude anything – lord knows this show can be completely unpredictable at times, and no pattern we find is guaranteed to hold true. HOWEVER, we can say it seems as though you’re safe if you dance last, pretty safe if you dance in the second half of the show, slightly at a disadvantage if you dance in the first half, and you’re almost totally screwed if you dance 2nd. I guess 2nd place really is first place loser 😉 But if it’s later in the season – well, then you just better dance like there’s no tomorrow!
O.M.G. You should take over pre-calculating scores. =D
Hahaha thanks Marianya, but this was a struggle for me – for the amount of delight I take in writing, I despise in working with numbers! LOL. And now I’m dealing with even more calculations for my “dance of death” post…eek. I’ll leave the heavy-duty math in your able hands 😉
Thaaaaaaanks… You’re so nice. I’ve been working/tweaking the Excel spreadsheet… so eventually I might start putting up posts about the pro dancer’s score in various styles or type of celeb… etc…. once I could figure out these silly arrays. 😀
Well that and the fact that SYTYCD is done so I could focus on America’s Got Talent for a little while. Did you see the teen ballroom couple? They’re cute, I hope DWTS and/or SYTYCD sticks around long enough for them to audition (should they so choose).
A really nice look at things Courtney, good job, appreciate the time and effort this stuff took.
I still find it odd that Nicole never danced first until finale night last season (according to wiki). It seems like every season everyone goes first at least once. (and often a few times, if they make it all the way through)
Maybe there are some celebs who tell producers they’d prefer to go first or at least early on in the show just to get it over with. (for nerves and whatnot)
Thanks Courney for the interesting angle this posting brings to mind. My husband and I enjoyed it immensely this morning over our coffee and being a Mark fan, I concur that last season he and Shannen we’re doomed from the start because their dances weren’t at all bad but they sure didn’t fare well for some reason and now you’ve proven why!
Shannen was given no favors but both Ian and Jennie danced first in their seasons. Then they went to the semi finals. Her scores were not that awful but going early, people do forget. The worst thing is not only to go early but dancing mediocre. But I cannot blame it just on the placement. If her fan base along with Mark’s was big enough, they could have overcome say Aidan, Kate or Buzz. For Nicole, she is not the only celeb who rarely went first. Neither did Kelly in season 9. The producers are not idiots. They know how everyone is polling. No surprise that Pam Anderson and Kate Gosselin went last for a few weeks because people were anticipating them. Helio and Shawn went towards the end a lot as well. Ultimately a good dancer with a fan base can overcome going first or a bad song the show gives them. I do not think it has to do with celebs asking to go a certain time since the show does not decide the running order until camera blocking. They see how people are polling, look at the dances, is their a story like a potential injury out there, and so on.
Courtney, great job gathering all this info! You pointed out that some other factors like going in the middle especially if you are not spectacular adds to being eliminated. I know it is just numbers and people interpret numbers however they want but I wonder about placements of the winners. Is there a pattern? Maybe from there we can start predicting who may win next season based on the running order. You can beat the Vegas odds makers!
I wonder if there’s any impact made by the fact that you can vote during the entire episode, as opposed to, say, sytycd, where the phone lines are open only after the show has ended.
@ everyone – Wow! Thanks so much for all your kind words and appreciation. This was definitely a labor of love for me (as I mentioned above to Marianya, I am really not a fan of working with numbers, hehe), but once I got the thought in my head about it, I knew I had to write it. Glad everyone is enjoying it as much as I did!
@ck410 – You bring up an interesting point about some couples never going first. Heidi and I briefly touched on it in one of our discussions and were unable to come up with any objective answers as to why some couples kept getting stuck dancing first, while others seemingly got the money spot week after week (Donny Osmond comes to mind – I don’t know for sure how many times, but I’ll have to look it up later). Heidi pointed out that the producers may be using knowledge of vote counts to determine the more “popular” couples, and intentionally put them towards the tail end of the show to ensure that viewers stay tuned in for the whole 2 hours. I mean, the bottom line for the “powers that be” at DWTS is ratings – so if tweaking the running order helps promote that, they may very well be doing it.
@Joan – Glad I could make you and your hubby’s morning coffee talk so stimulating! 😀 I definitely think running order played a big role in Mark & Shannon’s early departure – I myself had a hard time remembering their routines by the end of the show, not due to them being particularly unmemorable, but just because so much time had elapsed by time the show ended. Looking back, I also find it interesting that Mark & Sabrina had danced 1st on performance night the week they were eliminated back in season 5 – many say that their “shock” elimination was due mainly to complacency on the part of the voters, assuming they were safe due to their high scores; I think running order may have actually play a role in their elimination as well.
@John – Oh I definitely agree that running order is not the only thing that determines elimination – having a decent voting fanbase can overcome running order, bad dancing, and a crappy personality (how the hell do you think Kate Gosselin managed to stay around so long? 😉 ). But in some cases, certain celebs just may not have the fan base, and they’re relying solely on good dancing to pull them through – and they may actually be good, but they just get lost in a sea of other celebs who may not be as good, but are more memorable due to the order in which they danced. It seems from what I’ve uncovered in my analysis that you’re actually better off being a crappy dancer that goes first or last than a mediocre (or even good!) dancer who gets stuck somewhere in the middle. And you do bring up an interesting idea about the winners – maybe there is a running order pattern with them. I might look into that later…but for now, my brain is mush, hehe 😛 But wouldn’t it be sweet if some 25-year-old DWTS blogger from Indiana with only one college stat class under her belt blew the career Vegas oddsmakers out of the water with just some simple logic? Haha…I could be the next “autistic kid that predicted the entire NCAA basketball final bracket!” Kidding 😉
A poster on the abc dwts site summed up the Dance Order in terms of Ratings.
She indicated that DWTS insiders look at the ratings not in just an overall capacity, but in terms of hourly ratings. So you can measure the most popular celebrity ratings wise by where they are placed in the dance order. This is not to be confused with voter turnout, but it is often sympatico.
The spots where the ratings spike are at the top of the hour for both hours, at 8 pm and 9 pm, and at the half hour, to compete with shows starting at those time periods. So, for example last season we often saw Evan Lysacek at the top of the 9 pm hour, because he had ratings momentum. Pam Anderson was the highest rated the first night, and she went last, after that most weeks it was Kate Gosselin going last.
It was fairly obvious a few weeks in that Erin Andrews was not the ratings magnet that Evan, Nicole and Pam were because she wasn’t placed in the timeslots where ABC was needing the ratings to compete against other shows. Nicole was strategically placed as well the following week if her appearance the week previous showed a spike in the viewership.
The show doesn’t really care about the votes, they care about ratings.
One very distinct example this season on SYTYCD was week 3 when Alex Wong competed. His solo was at the top of the 9 pm hour, and his hip hop performance with Twitch went last. It was a very highly rated evening. After Alex’s injury the ratings suffered fairly significantly. This is a major reason why Ellen was gladly invited to do a tribute dance to Alex. Not only was Alex a wonderful exciting dancer, but he was a ratings boon.
My first thought when I began reading your post was that, solid stats or no, odds makers are going to be all over this article to see what you have to say. Thanks for your efforts – those variables are pretty crazy – have you thought about weighting them? Yeah, I don’t have the time either!
Andie makes interesting points about the placement re viewership/ratings. Personally, I think that has a ton to do with it. I bet the producers can tweak this sort of thing pretty good. Also, I’ve thought a lot about the judges scoring as a counter-weight (no I’m not a consipiracy person…it’s possible that their actions are more in-line with making a horse race – happens when scores have a subjective component).
Anyway, thanks for the post.
J – I would bet that the average viewer doesn’t do anything but vote by phone after the show is over – they’ve been trained by American Idol. Or if they vote by phone, that’s all they do.
Andie – I absolutely agree with you that it’s about ratings. Some couples are placed at the top of the hour to peak interest, others at the end to keep people watching. But the subject is – does their placement affect their odds of elimination? I think the answer is yes, to a large degree. Courtney and I have had a lot of conversations about what impacts elimination – fanbase, which pro you get, personality…the list goes on. That’s why the outrage over Nicole versus, say, Mel B or Mya, was so ridiculous. The only differences between the women (and add Sabrina here) was pro, personality and FANBASE. Nicole had a great pro who meshed very well with her, and a good sized fanbase – plus the fact that she won. Plus, most people I know liked her personality just fine. The experience thing is for shit unless you have the other factors working for you – which Mya did not. Sabrina and Mel B were both a bit grating, to me.
The producers DON’T care who gets voted off, they are after ratings. But I don’t think it’s beyond them to give favorable running order to train wrecks like Kate Gosselin who also garner PRESS.
ck410 – it’s especially odd that Nicole never went first when you consider that every season Derek’s been on the show, he’s danced FIRST and it’s been a cha cha on the first episode of a season – I don’t think there were any exceptions to this except for Joanna and Nicole. So, what happened the last two seasons for him to be starting towards the end? I mean 5 out of 7 times is a pretty strong trend.
I just wnated to say how you do such a good job covering DWTS! I’m so glad you cover all bases. Thanks for your hard work, time, and dedication.xxx
Great job guys. I wonder though what is the % of online voters. Considering that median age of DWTs viewers is 57 y/o, i assume it’s not significant. I remember reading somewhere that the producers have an idea of who’s in the B2 by Monday night.
@Voguerista & Jeniffer – THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! Glad you liked it 🙂 I promise this is not the last of my DWTS Stat Class posts…I’m currently working on one that determines whether or not there is a “dance of death” on DWTS, kinda like the quickstep is for SYTYCD. It’s definitely interesting!
@Andie – Thanks for the info – now that you mention how they strategically place certain couples in certain ratings “hot spots”, it does make sense. Although I have to wonder if this strategy on the part of the producers can sometimes do a disservice to the couples they’re placing in these spots…while they may be ratings “hot spots”, I don’t necessarily think they’re voting “hot spots”. Like I mentioned, it seems as though the couples dancing in the middle of the pack tend to get lost in the shuffle and run a greater risk of getting voted off than those who dance at either the beginning or end of the show…and with the ratings spike at the midway point in the show, it seems that whatever couple gets placed there has to contend with the whole “lost in the shuffe” phenomenon. I guess it all boils down to voting behavior, as someone mentioned…are the majority of voters actually watching the entire show before voting, or are they voting for their favorites before they’ve even seen them dance? And how many of those tuning in during the ratings hot spots are actually voting, period? Oy vey…I feel another post coming on…back to the drawing board, Court…looks like I’ve got some more analyzing to do 😛
It makes sense. If you look at the ratings for any hour or two hour shows, it spikes up as the show goes along. So actually someone like Evan dancing at the start of the second hour has more eyeballs watching him than say Erin if she opened the show. He maybe in the middle but his performance is fresher than those that danced in the first hour. Also if Evan and Nicole are polling the highest, then makes sense to put them there.
ABC doesn’t care about the dancing.
They care about the ratings. They would routinely put Kate Gosselin at the “pimp” spot at the end of the show. It’s great to boost voters for good dancers, but it’s really only for ratings for the poor dancers who are most famous or notorious.
The finale night of DWTS put Nicole and Derek dancing first, Erin second and Evan last. There could be an argument made that even though Evan got the “pimp” spot at the end of the night, the only dancer he could overcome with the vote was Erin. Nicole going first was strong enough to overcome the best dance order placement of the night.
@Andie – I don’t think anyone is disagreeing with you about the producers not caring about the dancing. I have always said that the bottom line for the producers is the ratings, and the will manipulate certain aspects of the show to bolster them. And I think that sometimes this manipulation can affect voting, and not always to the benefit of certain couples. In the end, it will always boil down to the voting behavior of the viewers: are they the loyalists, who will vote for their favorite celeb or pro, sight unseen, no matter what? Or are they the critics, who watch every performance, every week, and vote for the strongest performance each week? Or are they the passive viewer, who tunes in and doesn’t bother to vote? Or are they only the type that votes every once in awhile, and may not always tune in for the duration of the show? I think each one of these “voting types” would react differently to the manipulation of the running order – if they’re a sometimes-viewer, or late tuning in, then they will probably respond favorably your “middle of the show” theory; if they’re the critical type that watches the entire show each week before deciding who to vote for, then that same middle spot that stuck out in the late-tuning-in viewer’s mind might very well get lost in the shuffle for a person who has been watching the show from start to finish.
As I mentioned in the post, there are no hard and fast rules to make a concrete prediction for how running order will affect a couple’s chances of elimination – there are only patterns. Neither of our theories are going to hold true 100% of the time. Sometimes, the producers’ quest for ratings will affect the voting outcome; sometimes it won’t. But that’s the nature of this show and part of what makes it fun – it’s never going to be entirely predictable, even for the “powers that be” 🙂
Well, Andie, I don’t think the finale counts. In fact, I made the argument to Courtney before she posted that she needed to look at the stats also split in the middle of the season. My argument is that once you get past the halfway point, running order no longer matters. The audience is only seeing 5 or 6 people multiple times, PLUS they’ve already picked a favorite or two that they will likely stick with.
I also don’t think the finale counts because the audience have already voted, so the point of the post which was “does running order affect you leaving” would be moot. The audience – which is who we’re talking about, really – have already had their say. And the running order on finale night is simply the reverse order of the night before – they’ve done that for a few seasons now. Even as far back as Brooke and Derek.
Running order only informs us as to the ratings, not the vote, so yes I agree it does nothing to tell us who wins.
However, I still think that on finale night, running order may have some impact in terms of who is tuning in and when. The casual viewer is the one who tunes in at the beginning and the end of the series. It’s difficult to say if the spike in viewership turns into votes, but just by the climb in viewership on those nights, there is a bigger of pool of potential voters in the mix, and that may turn into votes going into the network.
Andie, I’m not sure what your point is – the POST was about if running order determines who goes home. We are talking about how the running order affects the VIEWING audience and how they vote. Not what the running order means in terms of what kind of votes they’re getting week to week nor how popular they are nor what the producers think about them, nor about ratings being the driving force in running order. You are talking about a different subject entirely. You are talking about the producers setting the running order in order to get ratings – no one is disagreeing with you, but that wasn’t really the subject. The question was: If you dance first, are you more likely to go home or If you dance last, are you guaranteed to be safe. I don’t think anyone is actually disagreeing with your point, just talking about a different thing.
I think my point is where Erin danced on finale. She went second. I anticipated that given that dance order she would be eliminated, because she wasn’t getting the audience, regardless of how she danced. The scores from the judges were inflated for her, and undercut for Evan to make it interesting, but it was clear that Evan had the vote because he went last.
Wow. Fantastic analysis!