Dancing with the Stars Season 17, Week 5 – Dancing by the Numbers PART II

Hey, I totally forgot to account for the Switcheroo Challenge crapola in my last post. It will be rather difficult to account for it in this follow up, since we aren’t really sure how it’s going to work.  Here’s what we know about it:

  • There appears to be two groups, one group comprised of Bill, Liz, Corbin and Jack. Everyone else is in the other group.
  • It is a switched up marathon with 2 rounds.
  • The music will change at least once during the marathon, presumably the style will change as well. I hear three possible styles, but that could just be chatter.
  • You get scored according to how long you last.
  • You don’t know the music or style you will be dancing too, although I presume they were given a list of potential styles.

Despite knowing all those things, we don’t really know how it’s going to work. I’m going to GUESS that it will be TWO marathons – first one group will do it and then the other group will do it. They will score each group like they do the standard marathons, that is the longer you stay, the more points you get. So, if it’s four couples, you can get a 7, 8, 9 or a 10.   Why the groups?? Perhaps it’s easier to judge…perhaps it’s easier to stage…perhaps they have TWO people they need to give the extra points to. 🙂 But as we know, more points handed out is not necessarily a good thing.

So, in my numbers from yesterday, pretend that the scenario I gave happened now it’s time for the Switcheroo.  I’ve given the couples their extra points as shown in the table below – I’m going to bet if they’re doing it this way, they’re doing it to help Liz and Brant. So those two are the ones who got the 10 points.  I also suspect that both Amber and Corbin might be in for a surprise – or Amber at least. Wouldn’t be at all surprised to see them give the 9 to Nicole, just to keep things interesting, but I’ve given it to Amber in my scenario. I think they will have a harder time doing that to Corbin, being that he’s such a ringer.  I think Len’s going to be dropping the hammer on Amber more and more because she doesn’t have the dancer’s body (and hence, in his mind, the correct moves) that he prefers. Old fart.  When you add in their new points, you get the totals, below:

Table 1a

Now, let’s see how much damage this does. The votes needed without the switch up dance can be seen here. Votes needed with the switcheroo are shown below:

table 2 a

As you can see, if these numbers are even close, they haven’t really widened the spread between Liz and Leah all that much; about 1000 votes. But they have widened the spread between Bill and Liz by about 4k votes per million votes cast. And that’s assuming he actually gets a 24 on his individual dance. Either way, they’ve got Liz pretty well insulated.

What they have also done is *narrowed* the spread between Bill and Leah by about 4k votes – I sure hope he’s killing it in votes, or he could be in trouble. If he gets lower than 24 and Leah does better than 21?? Trouble. Yikes. Even if it’s one point on both of them (Leah-22 and Bill-23) that moves the goal posts from just over 10k votes for Leah to beat him, to less than 4000 votes between them. This scares me. Let’s hope not.

If they do the IntstaMarathonSwitcherooni like I think they are, it also gives Brant an extra 4,000 vote lead on Leah and he also increases his lead on Bill by an additional 7,000 votes. Nice deal. That’s the nice thing about the marathon scoring (sarcasm) – while the addition of more points tends to narrow margins, the marathons increase the point spread such that it offsets the margin narrowing effect, if that makes any sense. Put another way, you narrow the margin between those at the lower end of the leader board (Bill and Leah) and you also narrow the margin at the top of the leader board (depending on who gets 8s and who gets 10s). But the margin between those at the top (Liz, Brant) and those at the bottom (Bill and Leah) is only widened, not narrowed. Not widened by a lot, but still.

So, you make it easier for Leah to beat Bill while still adding a bit of cushion to Liz and Brant. Of course, all of this hinges on who gets the 7s and who gets the 10s…and how well they do on their individual dances. At the end of the night I expect to see Liz and Corbin safely ensconced at the very top of the leader board and I expect to see Leah and Bill firmly at the bottom. As long as those two things happen, it might not matter what order the rest of them fall into.

And sorry, I can’t analyze this any more, it’s making my brain hurt. 🙂