Dancing with the Stars Season 18, Week 1 – Dancing by the Numbers!
Heidi’s my name and numbers are my game. 🙂 Yes, it’s that time of year once again. I’d like to thank the powers that be for one thing: switching around how the eliminated couple is determined makes this much easier to predict. For one thing, I don’t have to backwards guess at what the judges might do next – it doesn’t matter because the viewer votes and the judges scores from the same week (week 1) will send someone home in week two regardless of how well they dance this upcoming week. For another thing, it makes these posts much shorter. Theoretically. 🙂 The interesting thing will be is if the judges show a pattern of either extremely over scoring or extremely underscoring the couple going home – either send them out with a bang, or justify their scores ahead of time. Two or three times might be coincidence, but more than that? Hah.
Anyway, for you newbs to this site, this is a series I do every week of every season. Basically, I take the scores for each couple and figure out – using DWTS math – how many votes each couple needs to be safe. Then I guess, based on what I think I know about each couple and their voting needs, who’s going to be safe and who’s hitting the trail.
For those who don’t know…or those who believe the popular myth promoted by TPTB…the judges AND the viewers have an equal role in who stays and who goes. To determine who goes home, the producers take the total number of points handed out by the judges and divide that into each couples score for their percentage of the total. They then do the same thing for the votes: they divide the total number of votes into the number of votes each couple receives for a percentage. They then add the two together and the couple with the lowest combined “score” is the one who goes home. Fifty percent of the final score is judges and fifty percent of the final score is viewer votes. Easy peasy. 😉
Take a look at the totals.
On the surface, they made this first week pretty easy by giving Billy Dee William a 15 – lower than the next person, Diana, by three points. Is she safe? I wouldn’t be so sure. I think most people have heard of Diana, particularly if they are the typical DWTS viewer. But Billy Dee Williams? I hazard to say that he has a large, geeky, Star Wars-y fan following – also within the average DWTS age. What does Billy Dee have to do to be safe? Look at the table, below. On the left is Billy Dee versus the various couples, progressing down according to scores. On the right is the number of votes per million votes cast that Billy Dee has to get to stay over those other couples.
For example, for Billy Dee to stay, he has to get ONE of the following:
– Billy needs 11.5k more votes per million votes cast to stay over Diana;
– Billy needs 19.1k more votes per million votes cast to stay over Sean;
– Billy needs 22.9k more votes per million votes cast to stay over Drew/James/NeNe;
– Billy needs 26.7k more votes per million votes cast to stay over Cody
– Billy needs 34.4k more votes per million votes cast to stay over Danica/Amy/Meryl;
– Billy needs 38.1k more votes per million votes cast to stay over Candace;
– Billy needs 45.8k more votes per million votes cast to stay over Charlie
What you have to remember is that Billy only has to beat one person to be safe. But if he’s safe but called in “jeopardy” he could be beating EVERYONE – we won’t know. We only really know how someone is doing if they say that the last two standing are the “bottom two”. I’ll have more on that in a special post, hopefully this weekend.
Anyway, I think we can safely say that, based on those totals, Charlie, Candace, Danica, Amy and Meryl are safe. I think that Cody and James are also safe based on rabid fanbases. Hell, either could win if those fanbases actually vote. But what about Drew, NeNe, Sean and Diana?? Well, let’s take a look at what Diana has to do.
Based on the above Tables, Diana either needs Billy Dee to fail to get the 11.5k votes more than her OR she needs to get the votes per million votes cast shown above. Note that she only needs to get 7,634 more votes per million votes cast than Sean – that is not very much. And Sean was kinda…well…weird. And Diana was rather charming. What does Sean have to do to be safe? Well, if both Diana and Billy Dee surpass him by the required number of votes, Sean has to get ONE of the following:
Sean only needs 3.8k votes per million votes cast to beat either Drew, James or NeNe. That’s a really small number – but none of those people have small fanbases, I’m sure. I don’t think Sean can do it, but we’ve never had a hockey player so we don’t know how they’ll do for votes.
In any case, I think Billy Dee can beat Diana, but not Sean – so I think Sean is safe. Even though Diana needs less than 8k votes per million votes cast to beat Billy Dee, I don’t think she can do it due to the Star Wars factor. So…
I predict Billy Dee and Diana in the bottom two with Diana going home. And I will be sad. My second choice would be Billy Dee and Diana in the bottom two with Billy Dee going home. Way on the outside is the shocker elimination of James – I’m only tossing it out there as a possibility because it feels like the other three have fans more in line with the typical DWTS voter. Unlikely, but wacky things happen on this show…like Candace wanting a rumba as her second dance. Yeah, right. 😀
Hope Sean sticks around long enough to boost up the money going to his charity. 🙂
I love love these like I love Court’s Power Rankings every week. Thanks so much for putting this together (especially being sick and all) and I’m glad TPTB made this easier for you too.
Anyway, just fascinating as always. I’m with you. I think it will be between Diana and Billy Dee…with Billy going home if we go just by his dancing. Then again, he has a bigger fan base. Oh, this is hard. 😯
Billy Dee has the most views of his dance on YouTube (not as many as Bill Nye last season though… that went viral :o) so he seems to have some fans there. If that is any indication of what may happen on Monday night then I think Diana will be going home.. sadly 🙁
Great post – I always look forward to these By The Numbers analyses!
I was so hoping we would be able to say bye bye to NeNe and Tony.
I’ve seen quite a lot of Internet chatter saying Billy Dee was so embarrassingly awful that the kind thing would be to let him go home. I wonder if that means the Star War fandom will hold off on voting.
Since Meta World Peace went home week one, I can see a very unpopular hockey player going home and not getting an athlete bump. I don’t think the show did him any favors showing the sloppy seconds clip, although I think that might have gone over a lot of people’s heads. Of course he does have Karina but people might want to let her get away from this partner.
I think Diana might sneak through since she seemed to be having a nice time and older women might throw her a couple of votes, but she does have a new pro with probably a small fan base.
My guess is Sean goes home with Billy Dee in the bottom two, if they tell us. BTW, I hope the show stops with the “in jeopardy” garbage that seems to be beyond the comprehension skills of most of the audience and gives us a real bottom two. To me that is much more interesting.
It seems to me that Billy Dee, Diana and Sean are the most likely to be sent home; I’m hoping that Diana gets through, because she’s so enthusiastic about the show, and I’d like to see Henry get more of a chance to show what he can do.
Yay, numbers post!
I’m afraid it will be Diana. She just seems like she really wanted this opportunity because she loves the show so much.
@KarenT Yes, there have been a few comments made about Billy Dee embarrassing himself but for every one of those comments there is a “You vote for him anyway because he’s Lando” comment. So it really could go either way.
You also have to factor in that Disney owns ABC and LucasFilms and having Billy Dee on is extra chatter for Star Wars 7. So I’m not sure if he counts as “ABC Fam” or not.
I’m not sure how it will turn out. I know Cody is friends with JB so the “beliebers” might go all out for him. It’s hard to call until the first elimination is made whose fan base is showing up or not.
Great post. I always find your numbers report so interesting. I hope Billy goes home. There is such room for growth for Diana and it would be a shame for her journey to be cut short.
In all honesty tho, I would like Danica gone. I don’t think I can watch her journey to “womanliness” on my tv screen. I really don’t think I want to watch that.
I’m thinking this season could have some very surprising eliminations unless there is alot of “things” going on behind the curtain. And alot of it could be about who actually votes rather than just watche. For example, couldn’t Sean go home b4 Billy D or Diana because if he has much of a fanbase would hockey fans actually vote? And this possibility I would love, couldn’t their be votes split between Danika and Candace (the era and age group) with Candace getting more because she’s more likable, and does Mark have more fans than Val and many who might support Val are splitting some votes for Maks? And when it comes to the vote splitting between Meryl and Charlie, well, I know how I would like it to go but I think Charlie might go first. And with all that vote splitting where does that leave the rest? Drew should have quite a few voting right, cause isn’t he on a fairly popular show and Cheryl has a decent number of followers. James and Cody, tons of fans but do they VOTE(maybe twitter vote but all the other ways?) and if James fans are likely to vote maybe they would be the type to love Charlie? And I also think it’s really hard to predict who all will vote for Amy and what that depends on. I don’t think there will be any problem at least to mid-point, unless one of the dances is a major fail where she is unable to make it look good but after that I thik it’s hard to tell. I really hope she stays because I know I will love watching how Derek adapts everything to make her look great. I want Drew and James to hang in a while to see how they do with the different styles. Do you mods know anything about ages of voters-like is it the real young teens and 35 to 50″s?
I wish DWTS math had been an elective in school instead of regular math, which I sucked at. I might have kept awake in class more!
I didn’t know Disney owned LucasFilms. Guess that’s why we were able to see such iconic film characters as R2D2, Ewoks and Stormtroopers Monday night.
I actually would prefer Billy Dee to go home over Diana. I can’t really see his dancing getting any better or more important any easier for him. Diana seems to have energy for days and could go farther in the competition than Billy Dee’s body will let him.
If Diana and Billy Dee are the actual bottom two with Diana going home, then I can see them putting Sean in the “not necessarily” bottom two with her to try and stir people to vote for him, since it’s become apparent that his reserved monotone demeanor isn’t exactly winning people over.
As much as I love Billy Dee I think he should be the one going home. Sorry Emma.
So this is actually my favorite part of Pure. Thanks so much PH!
@KarenT, Keyshawn was also the first to go out last season, so no athlete’s bump.
It’s going to come down to a minuscule amount of votes, I think, between Billy and Diana. Billy has the bigger fan base, but Diana got the higher score. Also, I think we have to take vote splitting into account. If Meryl and Charlie have people vote splitting, that could leave an opening for Sean. So we’ll see. But I think that Billy or Diana or Sean will go home.
I’d love it to be NeNe but that’s unlikely. I think BillyDee is the one who *should* go. The physical demands of this show are far more than his body can handle (his dancing isn’t going to improve).
If it’s between Sean and Diana, I think Sean could lose. He came across as guarded and odd whereas Diana was joyful and engaging.
As far as “in jeopardy” vs. “bottom 2”, my guess is TPTB have *no* intention of giving up the jeopardy card. They know most viewers don’t listen and think they’re seeing the real bottom 2. So it gives the show another tool for their manipulation game.
About Billy Dee…
I’m also on a Star Wars fan forum, and I’ve seen more than a few comments to the tune of “I voted for Billy Dee in DWTS because I don’t want him to be going first”. Now, I have no way of knowing if those posters are regular voters or not, but anecdotical evidence like this leads me to believe that the SW fan vote may indeed pull him through at least the first week. We’ll see how it oges, obviously, but I thought I’d chime in with my impressions.
There are funny quirks in “DWTS math” which could be working heavily against BDW this week … in particular, the more popular that high scoring couples are, the more difficult it becomes for a low scoring couple to pass people ahead of them.
— With 12 couples in contention, if the viewer votes were distributed exactly equally, each contestant would receive 8.33% of the votes [i.e., 83,333 votes per million cast]. It is very easy to imagine BDW outscoring Diana by 83,450 to 72,000 for every million votes cast (a margin of less that 16% when only their votes are considered).
— If, however, the most popular couples garner a disproportionately large share of the total votes cast … for example, if BDW and Diana only average a quarter of their “even distribution” share (say, averaging 2% each or a combined total of only 40,000 votes for every million cast) … it becomes significantly more difficult, although not inconceivable, for BDW to survive. At a minimum, in this example, he would need to outpoll Diana by 25,725 to 14,275 per million votes cast (a margin that is still less than 2-to-1 considering only their own votes).
— At the extreme end of this math, if the most popular couples dominate the voting so overwhelmingly that BDW receives less than 1.145% of the votes cast, it becomes mathematically impossible for him to pass Diana (even if she doesn’t receive a single vote, which her dancing might merit but seems unlikely given her winning personality).
This season has a slew of good-to-great dancers who also appear to have very strong fan bases … starting with Charlie and Meryl but also including at least Amy, Candace, Danica and Cody. As a result, I anticipate that the viewer votes for these “front runner” couples will thoroughly swamp the meager few cast for the “cannon fodder” couples … making the judges’ scores even more decisive than usual this season. Consequently, I expect that BDW will be the first elimination (and that Diana will follow him a week later).
EL, I can definitely see the Star Wars faithful rallying to make sure their guy (and by extension their franchise) doesn’t suffer the humiliation of being the first elimination, then stop voting the following week so that Billy Dee can retire gracefully as the 2nd eliminee.
Breck, Very interesting insight.
You made that WAY harder than it had to be, Breck. And those funny quirks are no different this season than any season, not to mention that you’re delving into the extreme unknown when it comes to vote distribution. I try to work with actual facts – like the scores – and keep the fluffy, unknown part, to a minimum. The number of votes needed is fact. The distribution is completely unknown. We don’t even know how many people vote. But no matter how many people vote, BDW needs the same number of votes MORE than Diana. Votes are not finite in number until voting closes – it’s in flux from week to week, as is the distribution. They’re not contained in a jar where you portion it out – and if Meryl gets half the jar, all that’s left for the other 11 is half the jar to divide up. Doesn’t work that way. People vote for who they like, more people might vote than normal because Meryl is on, but that doesn’t necessarily take votes away from BDW that might otherwise have been his that he could have. It’s *popularity* – not the handing out of a set number of votes.
I love reading these posts though I still don’t know how to do the voting math. :-0
@PJ, I’m with you. I’d love NeNe and Tony to go. But I’m betting it’s Diana. I think Billy Dee will get one more week and then he’s gone. Anything longer than that would be wrong although I don’t like that it means Emma is gone too.
I don’t know how much I’m going to be able to deal with Danica. She’s grating on my nerves already. I get that she’s happy to be there, but come on. Just too hyper for me. I’m embarrassed for her on the way she’s acting. She’ll be gone before Candace. She’s happy to be there too and is way more likeable.
And PH, thanks for doing this again this season! It’s one of my favorites each week.
Crummy day at work. Needed a laugh. Came here. Mission accomplished. Thanks for the Cameron/Rumba remark. LOL LOL HEE HEE HA HA
well, I was laughing so hard–Make that Candace…..
PH, I love your numbers posts but I respectfully disagree with your criticism … votes for Meryl do affect BDW’s ability to jump over Diana in total scoring.
To take a simple (and intentionally extreme) example, assume that BDW gets 100,000 votes and Diana gets none. If the total votes for everyone else is 100,000, BDW gets a “viewer votes score” of 50% and leads the week in combined judges and viewer scoring. If, on the other hand, everyone else’s votes total 10,000,000, BDW gets a “viewer votes score” of 0.99% and goes home.
If the popularity of other contestants increases total voting, the task of passing people with higher judges scores gets harder. I think that could happen this season. That’s all I’m saying.
What some seem to be forgetting is Billy Bee Williams was one of the first sex symbols of his generation. His two films with Diana Ross (Lady Sings the Blues and Mahogany)were huge successes in their time. He has lot more fans than just Star Wars. He might be around a lot longer than people think.
Again, you’re making it too hard. If BDW gets 100k votes and Diana gets none, she goes home, of course. PERIOD.
If BDW gets 100k votes and EVERYONE else, including Diana, gets nearly a million (10 million divided by 11), then of COURSE BDW goes home. It’s not “harder”, it is what it is. He got out voted. This happens every season.
You’re trying to draw some conclusion that is unnecessary. This is not something unique to this season. If someone is more popular than BDW such that he can’t cover the spread, or everyone is more popular than BDW, then he goes home. That’s what it’s all about. BDW popularity relative to everyone else and his ability to overcome a judges point deficit. If all those people are so popular that they get a ton of votes, BDW goes home.
The main point remains the same – we don’t know who’s getting what votes, we don’t know how many votes are actually cast in a given week. We do know what the scores are and how many votes they need to beat someone else. You can ponder the whole popularity thing, but it’s really not a complex issue and there’s no need to make it into one. Why do I say this?? Well….how do you know BDW isn’t the one getting a million votes, eh? All you can logically do is determine their standings relative to each other using judges scores. If BDW goes home on Monday, will you KNOW who got what votes and how they were distributed, that BDW got few votes while everyone else got tons? No. All you know is that BDW didn’t get the numbers of votes he needed to pass one of them.
Big numbers make my head hurt! Great job Heidi!! And I took accounting back in the day where we had to write all the numbers on spreadsheets by hand and all the columns had to match on both sides! Talk about migraine inducing!
Billy Dee was just painful to watch. I’d much rather see Diana stick around another week because I love Henry.
Easy math makes me happy. Thanks PH. Talking to hear numbers rattle around in your head, drives me cray cray, and I find it quite insulting!
Aah! I love this post. I usually read it twice to fully appreciate it. Thanks, Princess Heidi, for making it easy to grasp. I would like see Billy and Diana stay for another week. I can do without Nene, but it seems it’s not going to happen sooner than I want.
I hope BDW goes home, I think it’s ashame that bad dancers stay on because of a fan base. It should be about the dancing & not because you have alot of fans. Know I’ll get alot of people aggravated at me. Sorry
@Carol You shouldn’t feel like you have to apologize for your opinion.
Just realize as long as fans vote, they will vote for who they want to. You can’t make them vote or not vote for someone. It may be a “dancing” show but popularity has a lot to do with it too. It normally doesn’t come down to who dances better until the finale, in my opinion anyway.
I know its supposed to be about the celeb but face it, who the pro is has a major role too.
All I have to say is- The best way to support your favorite pro, is to support their partner, no matter how bad they may be, but that may just be my naïve over expectative opinion.