The Independent
newspaper used to run a feature called “Questions to which the answer is no”.
The
Radio Times has an article about Strictly
Come Dancing that could fall into that category… maybe.
I
am not a Strictly fan (someone sent me the link), but it’s a nice article to
use with a class.
I
am going to show this to a class and ask them to comment on whether this will
be a good way to determine the eventual winner.
So, what did the Radio Times do with their trusty calculator?
They
added up ten numbers and then divided the answer by 10 to work out the mean.
They
then compare the ‘average score per dance’.
But wait: everyone has done ten dances, so everyone’s total is divided
by 10. So actually they could just have
used the total. That is a nice talking
point.
Then
there is the differing methodology. The
winner is the one who gets the most points in the final, not the dancer with
the most points across the series, so there is no nailed-on reason as to why this must work. It might be a good pointer to the eventual winner though. Can we test that out?
Well if
this is an accurate method then surely it will have worked last
year? The pupils could download the data themselves and find out. It’s
all available on Wiki (which is where my data below comes from).
Let’s
have a look. Here they are shown in the final order, so Caroline &
Pasha were the eventual victors.
After
10 weeks last year the leaders (on average … and in total) were waiting to be
eliminated after the next round, whereas the eventual winners were in third position.
I looked at two other years. In
2013 the eventual winner was leading after 10 rounds.
In
2012 the eventual winner was third after 10 rounds.
This
could all be discussed with the class and they could find out similar info for
all the other editions of Strictly too. (Maybe the years could be shared out
so two or three members of the class analyse each year as a homework task?)
Of
my sample of three years, in 2/3 of them the eventual winners weren’t in front
after ten weeks. I wonder what happens overall.
