DWTS Season 12, Week 7 – What if??
What if? What if Donny hadn’t been around to muck up the scoring?? What if there hadn’t been a team dance? Well, that second one is less interesting because Donny caused issues all by himself. 
Seriously, there is always a team dance, so I won’t really talk about that unless someone is desperate to know. Anyway, Courtney said to me, on Twitter – hey, you know, we should have a numbers post showing what the impact was of Donny and the Team dances. My response? Well, gee, I already ran those numbers.
So, you remember the actual scores right?? Kendra ended up going home, which meant that Romeo and Kirstie both got at least 2,660 more votes per million votes cast than she did – not a huge number by any stretch of the imagination. I figured that Kirstie was easily safe, but the question was between Romeo and Kendra – which one had more fans?? Had Romeo really gained a fanbase? Had Kendra turned people off?? Well, really, when you look at that number of 2,660 that is NOT a lot. It doesn’t truly require that Kendra have turned people off or Romeo gaining a huge fanbase. We’ve had similar discussions regarding Bristol and it’s not a huge effort to get that number – literally only 0.26 percent difference in this case, between Kendra and Romeo. That could be five people working really hard. Here are the numbers WITH Donny’s scores and the team dances included:
The Judges Scores and Percentages
| Place | Celebrity | Score | Percentage |
| 1. | Ralph | 66 | 17.51 |
| 2. | Hines | 66 | 17.51 |
| 3. | Chelsea | 64 | 16.98 |
| 4. | Kendra | 61 | 16.18 |
| 5. | Kirstie | 60 | 15.92 |
| 6. | Romeo | 60 | 15.92 |
Now, look at the exact same table with Donny’s scores removed completely:
The Judges Scores and Percentages, Sans Donny
| Place | Celebrity | Score | Percentage |
| 1. | Hines | 50 | 17.79 |
| 2. | Ralph | 48 | 17.08 |
| 3. | Chelsea | 48 | 17.08 |
| 4. | Kendra | 46 | 16.37 |
| 5. | Romeo | 45 | 16.01 |
| 6. | Kirstie | 44 | 15.66 |
As you can see, removing Donny’s scores makes a difference. Part of the difference is that the extra score increases the total and therefore decreases the spread. BUT, the fact of the matter is that Donny gave a few wacky scores that impacted the overall positioning of the couples. Here’s what Donny did:
The Donny Effect
| Celebrity | Score |
| Hines | 9 |
| Ralph | 10 |
| Chelsea | 8 |
| Kendra | 8 |
| Romeo | 7 |
| Kirstie | 9 |
Now, I love Kirstie, but that 9 is Cuh-razy. Donny is essentially responsible with putting Ralph in first place and seriously reducing the number of votes Kirstie and Romeo needed to stay over Kendra. Would him not being there have changed who went home? We will never know – but we can speculate. With the Donny-free total scores, Kirstie is the new last place finisher and needs the following to stick around:
- Kirstie needs 3,600 more votes per million votes cast in order to stay over Romeo, OR;
- Kirstie needs 7,200 more votes per million votes cast in order to stay over Kendra.
Now, what do you think?? The way it ACTUALLY played out she only needed ONE more vote than Romeo OR 2,660 more votes per million than Kendra. That’s a pretty sizable difference…unless your name is Kirstie, IMO. Remember, she only needs to achieve ONE of those goals above, not both. I think she still would have managed Romeo, easily, but you just never know. What about Romeo? What happens to his chances of going home?? Romeo needs the following to still stick around:
- Romeo needs Kirstie to NOT get 3,600 more votes per million votes cast than him, OR;
- Romeo needs to get 3,600 more votes per million votes cast than Kendra.
This, I’m not sure about. The difference is that he’s ahead of Kirstie by a nice cushion – but the difference between him and Kendra is larger by a thousand or so votes and I have a feeling that it was pretty close between them. We *know* that he got at least 2,660 more votes per million than Kendra did and we know that Kirstie did too…but what about that extra thousand??
My instinct is that nothing would have actually changed. But 7,200 is a good bit more than 2,660. Like I said, we will never know – but what do you think?
I was looking forward to this famous Donny dude with all his experience and knowledge. SHEESH!! Talk about lunchbag letdown! Now, yeah, he gave my favorite, Kirstie a terrific score, and while I’m grateful for the help (I still had churning tummy last night), he really didn’t end up impressing me much. This guy judges actual competitions? *snort* After this week, if I were a competitor, I might ask for a recount!
And if I understood the whole thing, then I think I agree with you. Nothing would have changed.
I love this post. Thanks, I see what you mean for how much Donny influenced the outcome. Not sure I’m open to this idea or him ever again sorry to say.
I think I’m just tired right now after all the schoolwork and it’s a little late at night but… what?? LOL. I had a hard time understanding this. What did Donny have to do with this? How did he influence the scores? Did I miss something?
Thanks Princess—This whole Donnie thing seems like a setup to me, his scoring seemed fixed ahead of time (especially the team dances both receiving 30s) and then the embarrassing moment during Romeos scoring. Seems to me the judges already know whom they want in the finals. And talk about creepy, he just seemed as Bruno might say, Creepy Creepy Donnie. He may be a champion dancer but to me he brought nothing to the show. And whats up with that hair?
@ Liz: Get some sleep, read it again. If it’s still unclear, get your math teacher to explain it.
@ sandy: It just saddens me that Donny isn’t wearing his age well. As for his scoring, I never jump to the conspiracy conclusion and it’s always a mystery to me why comments on the net so often do. It’s perfectly understandable that a guest judge won’t be tuned to the same wavelength as the others and will give some dissenting scores. And as a matter of fact, Donny came pretty darn close to the scores I would have given in his shoes, so he gets a pass from me this time.
Okay, to be honest, I read the numbers posts, but I don’t always understand the math, so most of the time, I just take Heidi’s word for it. I’ve never really understood math, and always dread my kids asking me for help on math. Fortunately for me, I now have a nice spread of ages, so I can have the younger ones go ask an older sibling.
Anyway, I did read the original numbers post this week, and I read this one, and I still didn’t really understand….
So I pulled out my handy dandy calculator, and I found that when I took the scores WITH Donny, and subtracted the lowest points percentage from the highest points percentage, I got a difference of 1.59 percent between the highest and lowest.
Then I did the same with the percentages WITHOUT Donny, and I got a difference of 2.13 percent.
I have no idea if I did that right, but it was what I needed to MORE (not completely) understand Heidi’s math post.
And when I subtracted again, 2.13 – 1.59 = .54 So, Donny made a .54% difference with his scores, but honestly, I don’t know how that translates, beyond that…..
Would it be possible sometime to have a post for Math-Stupid people (that would be ME) to explain the number of votes needed part? I did understand the 1 more vote needed part….
@Liz – We’re just taking a look at what might have changed had Donnie NOT been there as a guest judge. Essentially, due the scores he gave, he made it easier for both Kirstie & Romeo to stick around, put Kendra in a bit more danger, and kept Ralph safer. Make sense?
@Johan – I vacillate between thinking the scoring is purely random and thinking it’s all a carefully crafted plan decided before the show even begins. In the case of the team dances – I find it a bit peculiar that both teams got the same score. Granted, I don’t think either one was great, but they did seem to be feeling Team Chelsea a bit more than Team Hines, so I would have thought they would at least get a point or two more, just based on their comments. The fact that they tied seems to make the think they were just trying to lessen the margin of votes between each couple – maybe in an effort to conjure up a “surprise elim”. But Donnie’s scores are so random that I don’t think he came up with them with any agenda in mind – plus they differ so much from the other judges on some accounts (a 9 for Kirstie’s jive???) that I don’t think he could possibly be in collusion with them. Hence, his effect on the scores becomes more interesting
LOL – well, Lori, I hate to say this, but I thought I was making it easy.
It’s not that I’m math smart – I’m really not. It’s just that I think I have an intuitive understanding of how the numbers for the show work, so that allows me to see the math clearer, if that makes any sense at all. And it may not. Well, that and an excel spreadsheet. 
Where does it translate?? In VOTES needed.
Where Donny REALLY made the difference was in the bottom three point getters – by him being present AND giving Kirstie a 9 and by having him also score the team dances he decreased the number of votes needed for Kirstie and Romeo to beat Kendra. Not just because of the 9, but his very presence also has an effect because it increases the total of points awarded – the number that is divided into each couples score – when that gets BIGGER, their percentages, and the difference between each couple, get smaller. When that gets smaller, the number of votes you need to pass someone with a higher score ALSO gets smaller. In Kirstie’s case, by almost 5 thousand votes. That’s REALLY all there is to it – a substantial decrease in the number of votes that the bottom two need to stay over Kendra. If you are someone OTHER THAN Kirstie Alley in the bottom, that could be a huge deal – the difference between going home and staying on the show. Say that Chelsea was down in Kirstie’s place – assuming she doesn’t have Kirstie’s fanbase – Do you think that Chelsea gets 7k more votes per million votes cast than Kendra?? Maybe. Maybe not. The only reason we are saying that it probably wouldn’t make a difference is because got the biggest benefit from Donny and she probably didn’t need it. Romeo only had a 1000 votes difference, so it *probably* didn’t matter – but we’ll never know.
Ok I just now realized you meant Donnie Burns. When you said Donny, I thought you meant Donny Osmond. This is why people really need to watch the spelling because now we’ve seen DonnIE and DonnY on DWTS. This can be very confusing because of that spelling.
Heidi – Fantastic post! Thanks for laying it all out like this. It really helped me understand.
Great post! With Kendra gone its gonna be a tough competiton
Heidi, well I definitely don’t understand how numbers work, lol…. I am getting better, but still…. I can get easily confused when it comes to numbers.
One thing that I DON’T understand is how you figure out how many votes per million, is needed for one to stay or go?
(btw, and total aside, I sent a couple emails to you at PDH… One’s new…)
LOL, Liz, only to huge Kym Johnson fans. Why would I be writing about scores Donny Osmond gave to the dancers on Monday night? Answer: I wouldn’t, because he didn’t.
You multiply the percentage difference between two dancers by 1 million.
Whether it’s Donnie/Donny or Chelsea/Chelsie, context usually determines which one it is. People are gonna misspell them, no matter what – I’ve just learned to figure it out from context. Too much of a hassle to try and mandate a spelling rule
Maybe Kirstie is NOT getting as many votes as everyone thinks. She has been on the bottom or close to the bottom just about every week and they want her to stay till at least semifinals or longer. Count me in on one that is guilty of spelling Donnie/Donny and Chelsea/Chelsie wrong…oops. Heck I cant even keep my kids names straight. LOL
“he decreased the number of votes needed for Kirstie and Romeo to beat Kendra” Interesting.
@Bruce – By design, he did, although I can’t say it was necessarily intentional. Like Heidi said above, the very fact that he was there giving scores, period, actually helped decrease the points gap between the contestants – making it easier for low scorers like Romeo & Kirstie to try and catch up with the rest of the pack. As for Kirstie – he did her a pretty big favor with that 9, since it at least brought her up to tie for last place. Without Donnie, she would have been 2 points below Romeo, with a greater gap in percentage points. Now judging from all the buzz she’s generated this season, I don’t think she would have had any problems getting the votes, with or without Donnie; but I do think it at least decreased the likelihood of a HUGE shock elimination. He also probably shielded Ralph a bit by giving him that 10, which allowed him to catch up to Hines. Overall, though, I think Romeo probably benefitted most from Donnie’s presence – even if his was the lowest score Donnie gave all night. Just the reduction in percentage spread was probably enough to help Romeo. Kendra probably got lost in the shuffle, really – not too high, not too low, and not too memorable…and those are usually the ones that suffer most from a close points spread, because it all comes down to fanbase. I think she just happened to get lucky that Chris was scored so low last week – I don’t know if she could have overtaken him if he had done better.
@ Sandy: Kirstie has not been in the bottom almost every week. Scorewise she was there or on the lower tier only two weeks (and the difference between the top and bottom of the leaderboard was only a five point spread). She’s been “in jeopardy” only twice as well, but that doesn’t mean she rceived the third lowest amount of votes cast.
@Anne – Im sorry maybe I did not phrase that correctly. But my point is Im sure the producers would like Kirstie to produce higher scores to ensure that they have one of their celebrities that brings in the ratings stay as long as possible. Thats all I meant. Competition is getting close every point counts for your favorites. One slip up and its ‘bye-bye’.
Heidi, I’m not a huge fan of Mark Ballas, Chelsea Kane or Chelsie Hightower (they’re all great dancers, just not their biggest fan sorry!) and I still would’ve gotten confused as to why someone would be spelling Chelsie when they were talking about Chelsea. So it’s not just because I’m a huge fan of Kym’s.
I think the other reason why I got confused is because Donny Osmond did actually go on GMA to talk about the couples very recently even though he didn’t score them and I thought maybe he gave people his personal scores somewhere else.
Well, Liz, all I can say is, you have to actually read the posts and get the context – I don’t think that anyone would be confused at that point unless they are already thinking about Donny Osmond. Fact is, Donnie gave out scores on Monday night. I write about those scores and what happens when those scores are removed from the total. I think that is about as obvious as you can get and if you get confused by a ‘y’ instead of an ‘ie’ – well, I can’t help you there.
That’s a different problem.
Actually, it’s understandable in a way to be confused because of the way it was spelled in the article. I figured everyone knew how to spell Donnie Burns’ name.
Odd… I had never heard of Mr Burns before this past week’s show, but you know… in a discussion of the show that aired on this past Monday, had it been spelled Donnie, Donny, Donnye, or whatever, having watched the show in question it would have been perfectly obvious to me who the article was about.
Exactly Evaine.
And why on EARTH would “everyone” know how to spell Donny’s name? I think you’re going to have to accept, Liz, that in this case it’s YOUR problem and no one else’s. And yes, I used a “y” on purpose this time – were you confused? Careful – if you say “no” then the jig is up.
You have to read in context (perhaps carefully) in the event that I spell Kym as Kim – we wouldn’t want you to wander through life terminally confused because the bloggers hit one wrong key. Someone, eventually, will accidentally type Chelsea instead of Chelsie – but if we’re talking about Chelsea and Romeo’s dance, we kinda expect the reader to see past our little error based on the content of the post. If they DON’T – then that isn’t a problem I can fix. It goes a lot deeper than spelling.
I gotta agree – I didn’t know how either spelled their name, but if it’s a post about Monday night’s scoring and how the judges might have changed the outcome – well, the only Donnie that makes sense is the judge, not Osmond. The only way anyone who watched the show or even read the article could be confused if they came in with seriously weighted notions of Donny on the brain, or if they are just being snarky about a misspelling and are now getting called out on their comment, or I guess if they are just so obtuse that context doesn’t matter to comprehension. Or a combination of all three?
To everyone else, it was clear what this article was about.