

Markov Chain Monte Carlo and the Eurovision Song Contest - rouli
http://mewo2.github.com/nerdery/2012/05/20/ive-got-eurosong-fever-ted/

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Gring
Interesting part: "In 2009, it was reported that the 43 Azerbaijanis who
texted in votes for Armenia in that year’s contest were summoned to the
National Security Ministry to explain their actions".

I'm surprised that this country was allowed to stay in the EBU after such a
behavior. Really shocking.

Lebanon was more or less thrown out of the competition for not playing by the
rules
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanon_in_the_Eurovision_Song...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanon_in_the_Eurovision_Song_Contest)),
so I'm surprised the EBU did not do the same here.

~~~
yesbabyyes
And Azerbaijan is hosting the contest right now. A journalist friend of mine
currently reporting from Baku was presented with a newspaper on hir hotel
room, reading:

"[...] tourists and visitors coming to Azerbaijan will be able to personally
become convinced that the Azerbaijani society is tolerant. Political pluralism
and human rights have been fully ensured in Azerbaijan. The rules of our civil
society do not lag behind European ones."

The EBU is a pretty tolerant organization, I guess, but tracking down people
voting in the contest... What can I say? Yay nationalism.

~~~
Someone
If this happened at all, I would expect that the EBU wasn't involved. A
'sufficiently powerful' state does not need cooperation of the owner of a
phone number to check who SMSes what to it.

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toemetoch
_For the 2012 contest, I assume that all friendship values remain the same as
in previous years._

Being in Europe, I'd say that the love for several countries has been in
constant review over the past year. Just how and by how much will be clear
after we do the exercise again, after Eurosong 2012.

P.S. that title ("I've got Eurosong fever, Ted") is from a TV series called
"Father Ted". I recommend.

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sp332
Gotta love statistician logic! _The increase in certainty is probably due to
additional information gleaned from actually listening to the song._

~~~
__float
It is quite a good song, considering the genre.

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iuguy
Living in a multinational household Eurovision is always a fun evening of
cheesy euro-pop and European geopolitics. I've always preferred Terry Wogan's
humourous coverage of the event, which he's attributed to getting
progressively more drunk as the night goes on[1]. I imagine this year that no
matter how good the song, Greece will be getting _nil point_ from Germany and
vice versa. Of course, Cyprus and Greece get nil point in our household,
thanks to the Turkish element. Likewise, the French get nil point from the
English side. I imagine for Americans it must all be rather bemusing and
strange.

The post misses a substantial point about the Czech song Aven Romale[2], that
many eastern european countries that would normally bloc vote would be against
voting for a Gypsy song based on cultural reasons. I do like the point about
the Azeris and Nagorno Karabakh though.

[1] - [http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/may/15/eurovision-
song-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/may/15/eurovision-song-contest-
graham-norton-terry-wogan)

[2] - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3CgUmzl4sk>

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sparknlaunch12
Does anyone know what twitter (data) is predicting about the final? Twitter
has done quite will in picking recent elections, sporting events etc

The recent crisis in Europe should make the voting interesting.

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Edootjuh
Very interesting, and not too hard to follow with little knowledge of
statistics. I might even start taking an interest in the contest, despite the
Netherlands coming up with terrible songs to enter every year.

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hu_me
slight sidestep but it would be interesting to see how the friendship factors
have changed over the years. Could be fun to map on a news timeline to see how
it evolves with the geopolitical events.

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fuzzythinker
There's also a Million Song Dataset Challenge going on on Kaggle now:
<http://www.kaggle.com/c/msdchallenge>

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ebiester
The Israel numbers seem off - they have a large issue getting votes right now,
as evidenced by this semifinal when they (subjectively) had one of the top
three songs but didn't make it to the finals.

There may be a big change in public opinion, but I don't remember Israel being
popular in Europe for at least the last few years...

(From one of the very few Americans to actually know about Eurovision, much
less watch it.)

~~~
mewo2
Israel's numbers are actually fairly middle-of-the-road. They don't have any
habitual points donors (except maybe France), but they've only failed to
qualify three times (four if you include last night). They made the top ten in
both 2005 and 2008, and they won in 1998.

I think you may just have a different opinion of what makes a good song than
the voters of Europe.

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Anon84
In a similar note... ( American Idol prediction based on social media )
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4015553>

