The Olympics vs. American Idol: Scoring versus Voting

Last night was an interesting evening for seeing two different methods of determining "winners" to a contest. I am comparing the results of the free skate program of the Vancouver Olympic women's figure skating competition to the "elimination round" of the American Idol competition. First in skating, there can be no dispute. Kim Yuna skated an extremely technical, difficult routine, but skated it nearly flawlessly and with grace. She was judged by the same set of expert judges who scored all the other skaters of the evening, and they each gave specific points to her for each element she performed and how well she performed them. Because they have very specific criteria on how to judge (number of revolutions, position of skates on the ice, wobbles, precision of skate circles, etc) it is difficult to dispute the scores she received. In reality I think the judges may have scored all the skaters high, but frankly that is perfectly fair since they were all the same judges, scoring very consistently. Kim Yuna was the clear winner over Mao Asada, Mirai Nigasu definitely skated better then Rachael Flatt, and Joannie Rochette deserved the bronze (no "sentimentality" boosted her score.) After Plushenko's complaints about the "problems" with the new method of scoring figure skating, it was nice to see skating results without any controversy. In fact, in pairs and ice dancing there were no complaints from anybody else either.

Then there is the matter of American Idol's method of elimination using their call or text in vote system. The concept is simple, the two contestants with the lowest number of votes leave the show. So last night two ladies and two gentlemen had to depart the stage and give their final performances. The four that left were definitely not the best of the performers, but some of them were not the worst either. I felt both Joe Munoz performed better than Tim Urban or Alex Lambert, and I thought both Ashley Rodriguez and Janell Wheeler outperformed the likes of Haeley Vaughn on Tuesday. The problem lies in the fact that Idol determines who is eliminated by a popularity vote. The most popular people stay, the least popular people must leave - talent has some relevance, but not as much as how many fervent fans you have calling and texting like mad. I was wondering if they could have people actually send in a score via their calls or text messages, perhaps 1(poor) to 9(excellent) for each performer, but I could see all the fervent fans giving 9's to all their favorites, and 1's to all the people they do not want to win. I could see that actually hurting "critic's favorites" like Andrew Garcia or Crystal Bowersox who would receive a lot of low scores so that people can help their own "favorites" beat them. In fact, I noticed there is a site called VoteForTheWorst.com, where people are recommended to help keep poor performers on the show to keep it more interesting, with this week's selections being Haeley and Tim. Sure enough, both of those not so wonderful performers are still among the top 20. The voting preferences of the American populace is unfortunately not as fair and precise as the scoring of the Olympic skating judges.

I was wondering what would have happened if the Olympic figure skating competitions were determined by an American Idol style phone call and text messaging system. The phone and cellular systems in Korea and Japan would have been buckling at their limits last night, and the American skaters would have fallen even further behind in votes since voters in the US would be trying to vote for both Nigasu and Flatt at the same time. And since Rochette was a sentimental favorite I could see a lot of people voting for her over the better performing Kim or Asada just because of her emotional strength, or if they simply do not like Asians. Since the Idol votes are completely subjective and made by millions of anonymous voters, you have no idea who they might select. They probably would have given Johnny Weir the bronze just because he wears weird clothes and still performed a clean and esthetically pleasing free skate. And they would vote against Plushenko because they do not like his hairstyle or just because they think he is too cocky. The scary thing is these are the same voters making decisions in the popular elections, but at least there everybody only has one vote.

Well, enough of my Vancouver Olympic and American Idol post of my blog. I will go back to talking about my geeky Linux stuff, free software, housing issues, online calculators, Christan music, and local Wash U and St. Louis news in the future. I am just amazed anybody actually reads this stuff I write!