No real surprises yet since another one of the "HTF unpicked 5" bit the dust. For the record, the requirements for this exclusive HTF American Idol 6 club are that you are not picked on any HTF member ballots here (except, of course, for the top spot which is a forced selection).
The members of this "club" are (alphabetically):
Stephanie Edwards Sanjaya Malakar Brandon Rodgers Haley Scarnato Phil Stacey
With all the "anti" vote sentiment any of the remaining three could go next - if things go according to form (which they usually don't on AI).
And with the backing of the self-proclaimed King of All Media you might even go much further than you thought, Aaron!
I'm thinking that next year I might offer a "weighted" pool where each entrant chooses the finish order of the entire top twelve. The person who wins would be the one whose list most closely matches the actual final 12 order of elimination.
The scoring would be a point system based on how far each of your picks strays from his/her actual elimination position. For example, if a person were to choose Stephanie to finish 6th then since she finished 11th you would receive 5 points (11-6). Someone who chose Brandon for 12th would get 0 points (12-12), etc. The scoring would be like Golf with the lowest total being the winner. A perfect score would be 0 (and probably would never happen but who knows?) And I guess we could have a tie breaker (if necessary) by most closely picking the correct order of finish for the final four, or something like that.
That way I think we avoid not being able to choose the same person to win. The only restriction might be that no two people can submit an identical list. It's been years since my last formal math course, but wouldn't that open it up to almost 500 million possible entries? (12*11*10*9*8*7*6*5*4*3*2*1) Any math expert want to chime in here?
In any event it might make for an interesting contest and the rooting would begin with week #1.
Without looking at your spoiler, I believe the answer is 1. If I recall permutations of 12 taken in groups of 12 are 12! and combinations of 12 are 12!/12! In other words, there is one list of the 12 finalists. It's the order that's tricky and results in lottery-like possibilities. Not bad for a guy whose last "serious" math course was in College circa 1964 (I refuse to call the stats courses that were required for my doctorate "math").
So much for the theory. What do you think of my idea for next year's pool. It could be interesting and would certainly open the contest up to many more entries. I would imagine that we could even get someone to contribute a generic Excel (or similar) macro to keep track of the scoring, right?
Come to think of it, a similar format could be used for Amazing Race, Survivor, Big Brother, et. al. HTF contests. Then we wouldn't have to worry about all those "individual immunity," "head of household" and "winner of weekly leg" points.
Maybe yes, maybe no. I'm assuming that we probably wouldn't have that many entries (I don't think it would go into three figures if we aren't offering any prize except honor and glory). Most likely 20-50 entries.
Once set up the bookkeeping chore would actually not become too onerous. Every week one contestant goes home and all I have to do is add a "score" for that person on each list next to the performer's name. And as I said before, it seems to me that an Excel template with a simple lookup table and some simple formulas might actually make the process even easier. The main work would be the entry of each list into the spreadsheet and that's not much more difficult (especially with cut and paste) than keeping track of everything in a post at the top of the thread.
Does any of this make sense? We'll see. It's certainly worth a try.
If was thinking the same thing (even though I'll be quite busy until the end of April). A "Top Ten" would give everyone a chance to do a bit of handicapping and wouldn't be based completely on the audition shows which tend to be a bit "orchestrated" if you know what I mean. Maybe that's the way we do it next year in the "official" HTF AI #7 pool.
In the meanwhile, let's continue to play this "informal" game. All those who are in the "regular" pool, feel free to submit your TOP TEN in the order you expect them to finish, just like Nolan's example and mine. There is only one requirement: NO TWO LISTS CAN BE IDENTICAL. If they are, the first submission gets that list. Scoring is as follows: You get one point for each "step" your prediction is from the actual final position of each performer (regardless of above or below).
For example, if you pick Chris Richardson to finish 7th, and he finishes 10th then that's 3 points (10-7). But if he finishes 2nd, then that's 5 points (7-2). Should he finish 7th your point total for him is a perfect 0. The LOWEST point total wins the pool. A "perfect" score would be 0 points and you become an immediate Hall of Famer!
Let's give it a dry run with this year's TOP TEN. (Even with that there are 3,628,880 possible lists and 362,880 of you could actually pick Melinda as the Champion!)
If interested, submit a list in this thread and I'll do my best to set it up for tabulation. If it becomes too much of a chore then I'll find out quickly. But if we keep a manageable number of entries then it could be fun.
Recap of the Rules for this optional pool:
Only ONE entry per member. Even members not in the "original" pool may join!
List your top ten in numerical order (1-10).
Your list must be unique. No duplicate lists allowed. For duplicate lists, first submission gets that list.
Once you submit a list, it is FINAL. No edited lists are allowed (unless your original list is invalid due to a mistake or a duplication.)
Scoring is as described above. 1 point for each position away from the final position of each performer.
Lowest total points wins (with a score of 0 points being the best possible score.)
In the event of a tie the contest winner will be the entrant who was the fewest spots away from picking the winner. If it's still a tie, then we'll move down the list and determine who was closest to predicting the second spot, and so on, until the tie is eventually broken.
Entries close at 8:00p.m. EDT on Tuesday, March 27, 2007.
Nolan started the ball rolling. Let me continue it on its path...
My order of finish, based on what I've seen so far is:
01. Melinda Doolittle 02. Lakisha Jones 03. Blake Lewis 04. Jordin Sparks 05. Chris Richardson 06. Chris Sligh 07. Sanjaya Malakar 08. Haley Scarnato 09. Phil Stacey 10. Gina Glocksen
NOTE: If you use the exact format as I used above (I also took the liberty of editing Nolan's list) it might make any cut-and-paste that I use a bit easier on the eyes.
01. Melinda Doolittle 02. Lakisha Jones 03. Jordin Sparks 04. Blake Lewis 05. Chris Sligh 06. Haley Scarnato 07. Chris Richardson 08. Sanjaya Malakar (much as it pains me to not see him win!) 09. Phil Stacey 10. Gina Glocksen
I'm assuming that the order you listed was your predicted order of finish. However, you assigned the same positional numbers to all the performers as I did in my list. The numbers on my list were positional numbers and nothing tied into the actual names of the contestants. Accordingly, I've re-numbered your list by position. Please make sure that this is what you intended (the finishing position for each of the top ten). Make sense?