Data Analyst Spoils the World's Biggest Song Vote

littlekorea writes "A data analyst has successfully predicted the top ten songs of the world's biggest song contest — the Triple J Hottest 100 — by extrapolating voting intentions fans had posted on Twitter and Facebook. Nick Drewe's Warmest 100 list closely mimicked the Hottest 100 results, predicting the top three in correct order and predicting 92 of the most popular 100 songs."

How is this spoiling?

[TWX]

That's like saying that Nate Silver or Andrew Tanenbaum spoiled the presidential election... Just because they looked at the signs and figured out how others were going to vote doesn't mean that they spoiled anything.

Let's talk about this again if statisticians end up actually influencing the vote through their data analysis. Otherwise, let it go.

k...

[Anonymous Coward]

did you even look at the page?

He goes very much out of his way not to spoil it, but giving you half a dozen very large warnings.

Re:subject

[jonwil]

I am an Aussie and love good Aussie music and I haven't heard of any of the songs in the top 20.

In saying that, I should point out to the foreigners here that Triple J isn't exactly mainstream (Triple J started out as a station to play all the artists that commercial radio was ignoring and still does so today in some cases)

Re:Two things.

[deek]

1. Your cynicism is getting the better of you. This is a valid news for nerds story, about how data analysis successfully predicted the majority of a list meant to be kept secret. The story would have been interesting, had it come from any part of the world.

2. The Triple J station is known for playing many alternative and unknown artists. It's a government funded station, but editorially independent from government by law. Your list of known songs/singers/artists are likely influenced by your regional tastes, and also commercial interests of the stations you listen to. These would not match up with an alternative music station.

2a. Have a listen to Thrift Shop, the song that made #1. I'm not generally one for hip-hop, but I liked it. Great lyrics, has some good things to say about fashion labels and stylistic expectations. Interestingly enough, the song is independent of commercial labels, and has had great success in US/Canada/Australia/New Zealand.

Comparison chart with commentary

[diodegod]

For a slightly more detailed comparison of Warmest 100 vs. Hottest 100, here's a chart a mate did which includes some commentary:

http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/WarmesttoHottest1002012/Dashboard [tableausoftware.com]