Let's test the Oscar's Best Picture formula (Please vote!)

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  • #31
    Re: Let's test the Oscar's Best Picture formula (Please vote!)

    Let's not let this thread stray into discussing politics, even as analog to Oscar voting.

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    • #32
      Re: Let's test the Oscar's Best Picture formula (Please vote!)

      Still not a lot of data, but using the old system, this would currently be the result…

      The Hurt Locker (5 votes)
      District 9 (4 votes)
      Avatar (3 votes)
      Inglourious Basterds (1 vote)
      Up (1 vote)
      Up in the Air (1 vote)

      The Hurt Locker would squeak out a victory over District 9.

      But, with the new system, there is no winner until one film has over 50% of the votes by process of eliminating the films with the least votes in each round.

      Nothing changes in the second round since the eliminated titles would be The Blind Side, An Education, Precious and A Serious Man, affecting no one’s vote.

      So in the third round Inglourious Basterds, Up and Up in the Air are eliminated, resulting in two extra votes for District 9 (both #2 choices) and one extra vote for The Hurt Locker (a #7 vote, as #1-#6 on the ballot were all eliminated movies). Thus…

      District 9 (6 votes)
      The Hurt Locker (6 votes)
      Avatar (3 votes)

      Avatar is now eliminated, resulting in two extra votes for The Hurt Locker (both #2 choices) and one extra vote for District 9 (a #4 choice). Thus...

      The Hurt Locker (8 votes)
      District 9 (7 votes)

      The Hurt Locker finally has over 50% and still wins.

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      • #33
        Re: Let's test the Oscar's Best Picture formula (Please vote!)

        Originally posted by TheKeenGuy View Post
        Let's not let this thread stray into discussing politics, even as analog to Oscar voting.
        Even though the example I gave is the only explanation in the thread of how a different result could come from the new system compared to the old system, why that result would arise, and how it relates to some of the controversy around CRASH's Oscar win?
        Steven Palmer Peterson

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        • #34
          Re: Let's test the Oscar's Best Picture formula (Please vote!)

          Originally posted by sppeterson View Post
          Even though the example I gave is the only explanation in the thread of how a different result could come from the new system compared to the old system, why that result would arise, and how it relates to some of the controversy around CRASH's Oscar win?
          I did think you explained things well, but the metaphor you used was too politically loaded, and the next two posts (which you may not have seen) went down the same road.

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          • #35
            Re: Let's test the Oscar's Best Picture formula (Please vote!)

            Originally posted by Biohazard View Post
            I can think of an easier way of doing this...vote for one film, and the film with the most votes wins.

            I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me why that system is inadequate.

            The film with the strongest support is the one that gets the most singular votes. If you want it to win, you will vote for it. And since there is only one winner with no second or third place, there is no reason or need to cast more than one vote.
            Here is the reasoning.

            There is an election/Oscars coming up. I think Ralph Nader/District 9 deserves to win. Ideally people would vote for the person/film they think deserves to win. But in reality, this doesn't happen. In reality people want their vote to count, and they don't want to throw it away on a lost cause. There are only two contenders in your typical US election/Oscars: Democrat and Republican/The Hurt Locker and Avatar. Everybody knows this, everyone's decision comes down to the most palatable of two choices. A vote for Nader/District 9 would merely be a symbolic waste.

            What the single transferable vote system does is to remove the psychological barrier that prevents people from voting for their actual first choice. I know for a fact that it would effect the strategy of my vote if I was in the academy this year, and I am actively aware of the issue at hand here. For example, if it was the old system I would vote for The Hurt Locker, because I favor it to win over Avatar. But if it was the new system I would vote for District 9 with The Hurt Locker as my second pick. That way my vote would still probably end up going to The Hurt Locker and helping it to beat Avatar, but enough people were thinking along the same lines as me District 9 might scrounge up enough votes to win.

            PS. I know I dropped some politics in my examples but they are just examples and do not necessarily reflect my political orientation which matters not anyway since I'ze a Canuck

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            • #36
              Re: Let's test the Oscar's Best Picture formula (Please vote!)

              The Hurt Locker finally has over 50% and still wins.
              the hurt locker wins!!!

              and bigelow will win for best director as well especially since she won best director from the directors' guild. it's a win win situation for all woman (and men b/c some of y'all need to get over yourselves) and non-tentpole/blockbuster writers.

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              • #37
                Re: Let's test the Oscar's Best Picture formula (Please vote!)

                Just to add to the solid explanations above, consider the case of large fields of candidates. How about a small town election for mayor - 10 candidates, 100 voters?

                What happens in a single vote situation? In an extreme example, Candidate A receives 11 votes and wins as all of the other candidates receive 10 or 9 votes. 89 people vote for other candidates and yet the winner takes it with only 11 votes. Does the winner actually represent the will of the whole electorate?

                In preferential voting, the votes are redistributed based on the rankings of candidates by the electorate. The ultimate winner will always have the support of at least 50+% of the voters.

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                • #38
                  Re: Let's test the Oscar's Best Picture formula (Please vote!)

                  Here is my final write-up about this...

                  Patrick's demonstration of the new Academy Awards Best Picture voting formula!

                  This year, not only are there ten nominees for Best Picture, but there's also a new system for voting.

                  As Entertainment Weekly explains: "Rather than simply check off one of the 10 nominees, Academy members are being asked to rank the contenders from 1 to 10. After all the first-place citations are counted, the film with the fewest votes will be eliminated, and those voters' second choices will count instead. The process continues until one film has more than 50 percent of the vote."

                  So in an attempt to understand how that kind of system works and how it could affect the results, I collected 66 ballots from the members of three movie-related message boards (The Auteurs, Done Deal Pro, Triggerstreet). Of course, with such a limited voting pool, this is by no means an attempt to predict Sunday night's winner.

                  We begin by adding up all of the #1 votes. The result is this:

                  Inglourious Basterds (16 votes)
                  The Hurt Locker (15 votes)
                  A Serious Man (13 votes)
                  Avatar (5 votes)
                  District 9 (5 votes)
                  Up (4 votes)
                  Up in the Air (4 votes)
                  An Education (2 votes)
                  Precious (2 votes)

                  Assuming that everyone would have chosen the same film as their #1 under the old system, Inglourious Basterds would just barely eke out a victory.

                  However, according to the new system, the winner needs over 50% of the vote, and Inglourious Basterds has just less than a quarter of the vote.

                  Therefore, we move to the next round, where the lowest vote-getter is eliminated.

                  The Blind Side has no votes and is immediately eliminated, and because that affects no one's #1 choice, we move on to the next lowest.

                  An Education and Precious are eliminated, resulting in two new votes for Avatar, one for The Hurt Locker and one for Up (all #2 choices of those balloters whose #1 was eliminated). Thus, the new vote total is:

                  The Hurt Locker (16 votes)
                  Inglourious Basterds (16 votes)
                  A Serious Man (13 votes)
                  Avatar (7 votes)
                  District 9 (5 votes)
                  Up (5 votes)
                  Up in the Air (4 votes)

                  Now, Up in the Air is eliminated, resulting in two votes for The Hurt Locker, one for District 9 and one for Up (which is actually the balloter's #3 pick, because their #2 pick Precious had already been eliminated). Thus:

                  The Hurt Locker (18 votes)
                  Inglourious Basterds (16 votes)
                  A Serious Man (13 votes)
                  Avatar (7 votes)
                  District 9 (6 votes)
                  Up (6 votes)

                  Now, both District 9 and Up are eliminated, resulting in four votes for Avatar, three for The Hurt Locker, and two for both Inglourious Basterds and A Serious Man. One ballot was eliminated completely because it no longer contained any of the four remaining films. Thus:

                  The Hurt Locker (21 votes)
                  Inglourious Basterds (18 votes)
                  A Serious Man (15 votes)
                  Avatar (11 votes)

                  The Hurt Locker has pulled ahead, now with almost a third of the vote.

                  Now, Avatar is eliminated, resulting in four votes for both The Hurt Locker and Inglourious Basterds, and three ballots are eliminated completely. Thus:

                  The Hurt Locker (25 votes)
                  Inglourious Basterds (22 votes)
                  A Serious Man (15 votes)

                  The Hurt Locker leads with just over 40% of the vote.

                  Finally, A Serious Man is eliminated, resulting in nine votes for The Hurt Locker and six votes for Inglourious Basterds. Thus:

                  The Hurt Locker (34 votes)
                  Inglourious Basterds (28 votes)

                  Even though Inglourious Basterds would have won using the old system, The Hurt Locker ends up winning as a result of the new system by gaining nearly 55% of the votes.

                  What's interesting is that even though only 31 voters picked the top two films as their top picks, 62 out of 66 of the voters had an impact on the final vote, with only four of the voters ranking neither of those two films on their lists.

                  Given that a film would have to have substantial favor to gain over 50% of the vote before a final round head-to-head, this means that when there is a real horserace, such as is the case this year, most Academy members will have the opportunity to affect the outcome, even if their personal preference is for a film that has virtually no chance of winning.

                  Also, while I'm working with quite an insubstantial amount of data here, the way the math plays out suggests that the new system actually prevents spoiler and dark horses from ruining the chances of one film when there's two clear frontrunners.

                  In previous year, we've seen several occasions where the populist choice won out over what was largely seen as the more accomplished underdog (Forrest Gump over Pulp Fiction, Titanic over L.A. Confidential) presumably because those critically-minded voters might have also gravitated towards films like The Shawshank Redemption or Good Will Hunting. Perhaps a system like this would have affected the outcome of those races.

                  Or take Crash's surprise win over Brokeback Mountain and consider where the votes would have gone between those two films when other nominees like Capote and Good Night, and Good Luck were eliminated.

                  Consider this when watching the Oscars on Sunday night, and remember that the conventional wisdom has been that this is a dogfight between Avatar and The Hurt Locker with Inglourious Basterds as a possible dark horse. Think about where the votes would go when one of those three films is eliminated in the next to final round of tallying.

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                  • #39
                    Re: Let's test the Oscar's Best Picture formula (Please vote!)

                    what a bad year, honestly i liked all these movies, at least the ones i've seen, minus avatar precious and an education which i didn't see.

                    but oscar worthy movies, i don't think so.

                    1. hurt locker

                    that's as far as i'm going. up in the air was good, i personally liked the ending but as far as oscar worthy. . . no.

                    it's kind of like that year in sports where you play nobody good but you're ranked even though your schedule stinks, this will go down i think whether avatar wins or not the year of avatar and the oscar nominee will almost be an after thought.
                    You only get one chance to rewrite it 100 times.

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                    • #40
                      Re: Let's test the Oscar's Best Picture formula (Please vote!)

                      seriously... a serious man shouldn't be in there. the coen bros have made so many better flicks over the years. almost makes me think there's something wrong with some of you people here.



                      i do like the newer system b/c even though my #1 did get picked (this time) if it didn't i would like to have my #2 or #3 at least get in there and win.

                      i liked how tom hanks rushed out and skipped straight to naming the winner before bigelow could get too far off the stage.

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