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Eurovision statistics analysis, and an apology to the people of Malta

mewo2.github.com

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Re: Eurovision statistics analysis, and an apology to the people of Malta

#6

I'm sorry but that song by Sweden was just awful. Ok, not as bad as the singing grannies from Russian but still awful.

For me, it was the most memorable. That's the key to winning: something that hits you instantly and sticks with you.

It was simple, it played up to a genre preference of Western Europe and the performance was unique in comparison to other acts.

Re: Eurovision statistics analysis, and an apology to the people of Malta

#7

I'm sorry but that song by Sweden was just awful. Ok, not as bad as the singing grannies from Russian but still awful.

I on the other hand rather liked it. I think it's rather odd to expect everyone to share one's own taste in music.

Re: Eurovision statistics analysis, and an apology to the people of Malta

#8
I think there's another variable the model can't really account for (and I'm surprised wasn't mentioned much in the article, though perhaps it was already covered previously). People actually do like some songs better than others.

I expect that what friendships actually do is strongly modulate this like/dislike for particular songs. Based on the kind of music favoured in Europe that would probably go a long way explain why Sweden did so well and Norway did so terribly.

Re: Eurovision statistics analysis, and an apology to the people of Malta

#9

I'm sorry but that song by Sweden was just awful. Ok, not as bad as the singing grannies from Russian but still awful.

Pretty much every song was hilariously bad to the point where I think everyone was trying to lose so they didn't have to host it next year.

Re: Eurovision statistics analysis, and an apology to the people of Malta

#10
post #8

I think there's another variable the model can't really account for (and I'm surprised wasn't mentioned much in the article, though perhaps it was already covered previously). People actually do like some songs better than others. I expect that what friendships actually do is strongly modulate this like/dislike for particular songs. Based on the kind of music favoured in Europe that would probably go a long way expla…

In earlier articles the "quality" of the song was in fact accounted for - if a song did better in the semi finals than its position within the network of countries giving each other points by default warranted, it was considered to be a better song.

That said, while the predictions had Sweden on top, it also had Norway in third place. Obviously the effect of a song being good isn't as strong as this model thinks. The top three had two countries that have lots of friends, Russia and Serbia, that had not-too-terrible songs that therefore managed to scrape away points even from countries that aren't friends.

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