Nice People Thread No. 15, a Cyber Summer

vivatifosi

silvercar wrote: »

Based on your wisdom and an odd moment of patriotism, I've put a small bet on the UK ending in the top 10. Got odds of 12-1.


search tag eurovison

Oh crikey... I hope that I'm right now:eek:. However the odds are stacked in your favour. What they don't seem to price in is that the UK will automatically go through to the final, so it has already beaten about half of the songs. Then it only has to finish in the top 10 out of 24(?), so you're getting 12-1 for something that has about a 40% chance of happening anyway.

Generali

How often has the UK come in the top 10 recently?

Given the political nature of the voting that's likely to be a big clue as to whether there's value in that bet.

vivatifosi

Nothing is a clue Gen. The whole voting system is changing this year and nobody knows how it will be affected, therefore the results could be substantially different.

In the past, the public voted, and there was a degree of voting for ones neighbours. Since then (early 2000s??) there have been two components to a vote: the jury vote of industry professionals and the public vote for a country. Each had a 50% weighting. It is the combined score which has set the vote for a country. This came up with some interesting results... for example, the well known public vote in the UK for the Polish washerwomen in Denmark two years ago. The public put it top, but it was marked last by the jury. As a result it got no points from the UK.

This year, the marks will be different again. The results of the juries of each country will be read out first. The UK could do well here, it is quite a catchy song. Then will come the votes of the public. But rather than being added together and the points split by country (eg the UK public giving 12, 10, 8, 7, 6... points etc), the points given by each country will be added up and then presented by song. These point scores will then be added on in reverse order... so the lowest song may get - say - 5 points, up to the highest scoring a couple of hundred. However the idea is that no country can be seen as voting for another.

So nobody yet knows the impact of what the new voting system will be. It may be that the jury votes being split out means that only the really good songs prevail, or that block votes could be hidden but take over. Until the night, nobody will know. The one thing that is almost certain though, is that because there are double the number of possible votes (ie one set of jury votes and one set of public votes), the chance of a song getting no points is significantly reduced.

Also, the fact we have scored poorly in the past may reflect the fact that the songs were total c**p. We have scored quite highly when entering good songs.

Another big change this year is that the British song will also be played in the semi-finals. The big five, which do not compete in the semi finals, were previously seen as at a disadvantage as they didn't get the same airplay/publicity in the run up as those that people had seen and liked in the semis.

We haven't had a top 10 song since 2009 (when we placed 5th), though we came close in 2011 with Blue (11th). We have however placed 1, 2 and 3 in 1997, 1998 and 2003 respectively. So it isn't impossible. But fact... the X Factor generation who vote actoss Europe aren't interested in Englebert or Bonnie or some weird electro-slide duo. This year, thankfully, we've gone more mainstream. However they haven't set the UK charts alight... we normally (though not always) score better with songs that chart in the UK.

Pyxis

Maybe the only way to stop politics deciding the outcome is to have two draws: a song is drawn from one, and then a country to sing it is drawn from another.
Could make for some interesting pairings!

Then the songs are voted for by the People's Republic of China.


All that should prevent any bias! :D:D




Still don't understand why Oz is in a Euro contest!

Pyxis

the





[STRIKE]ERS[/STRIKE]

GDB2222

Google images is quite effective sometimes. So the white haired geezer is apparently Brian May.

Then there's a perfect fourth.

A bee.

An actress called Googie Withers, without the ERS.

Followed by a sheep with lambs.

No idea what any of this means, so clearly the force isn't with me today.

Wheezy_2

vivatifosi wrote: »

... for example, the well known public vote in the UK for the Polish washerwomen in Denmark two years ago.

Yes, I remember her.



:drool:

GDB2222

PasturesNew wrote: »

Another DM balls up.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3571711/Look-week-Halley-s-comet-set-annual-areas-40-meteors-hour.html

I don't know much, but I do know it comes every 70 years and it was about 30 years ago and I didn't see it then, so I've missed it forever.

I don't think that you're being fair. They say 'The Eta Aquarid shower will peak on Wednesday and Thursday with impressive views expected all over the world. The pieces of space debris that interact with our atmosphere to create the Eta Aquarids originate from comet 1P/Halley (pictured). Halley's Comet returns to Earth's vicinity approximately every 75 years'

Wheezy_2

May the 4th be with lambs?

Pyxis

Wheezy wrote: »

May the 4th be with lambs?

:rotfl: :rotfl: