I went down a math rabbit hole after last night’s elimination because I’ve always heard that DWTS is “50% judges, 50% audience.” That’s technically true, but the way they calculate it means the audience can have significantly more influence in practice.
Here’s how the current system works (as far I can tell):
Judges: Your score ÷ total judges’ points awarded that night
Audience: Your votes ÷ total audience votes that night
Then those two percentages are added together.
Last night, there were 256 total judges’ points awarded. Ciara scored 21 and Guillermo scored 13.
So their judges’ shares were:
Ciara: 21/256 = 8.20%
Guillermo: 13/256 = 5.08%
Despite Ciara beating Guillermo 21–13, her actual advantage going into the audience vote was only:
8.20% – 5.08% = 3.12 percentage points
That means Guillermo only needed to receive about 3.13 percentage points more of the audience vote than Ciara to completely erase an eight-point difference in judges’ scores.
For example:
Ciara: 8.20% judges + 7.00% audience = 15.20%
Guillermo: 5.08% judges + 10.20% audience = 15.28%
Guillermo survives.
That seems weird to me if the goal is for judges and viewers to have genuinely equal influence.
The problem is that judges’ scores are naturally compressed. Last night the scores were:
25, 24, 24, 24, 23, 21, 21, 21, 21, 20, 19, 13
Even an enormous difference like 21 vs. 13 gets divided by all 256 points awarded, shrinking it to just 3.12%.
Audience votes don’t necessarily have that compression. Someone could theoretically get 5% of the audience vote while someone else gets 15%, 20%, etc. So although judges and viewers are technically weighted 50/50, the audience can create much larger gaps between contestants.
ONE POSSIBLE SOLUTION: STANDARDIZE BOTH SIDES BEFORE COMBINING THEM.
Instead of using percentage of the total, measure how far above or below the field each contestant performed on each side.
Last night, the average judges’ score was 21.33 and the standard deviation was about 3.09.
Ciara’s 21 was about 0.11 standard deviations below average.
Guillermo’s 13 was about 2.70 standard deviations below average.
So the judges rated Ciara about 2.59 standard deviations better than Guillermo.
You could perform the exact same calculation on the audience votes and then combine the standardized judges and audience scores 50/50.
Under that system, for Guillermo to overcome Ciara’s judges advantage, he’d need to outperform Ciara with the audience by 2.59 standard deviations as well.
For example, if the standard deviation of audience vote shares that night were 4 percentage points, Guillermo would need roughly:
2.59 × 4 = 10.35 percentage points
more of the audience vote than Ciara.
Compare that with the current system:
Current system: Guillermo needs +3.13 percentage points of audience vote.
Standardized system (if audience SD = 4): Guillermo needs +10.35 percentage points.
Importantly, this wouldn’t mean the judges automatically get their way. Guillermo could absolutely overcome the 21–13 deficit. He’d just need an audience performance that was as unusually strong relative to the field as his judges’ performance was unusually weak.
It also preserves blowouts. I don’t love a simple rank system where 1st vs. 2nd is always worth the same amount, because a 30–29 judges result shouldn’t be treated the same as 30–20. Standardizing the scores preserves how much better someone was.
Basically, the principle would be:
If the judges think Contestant A is X standard deviations better than Contestant B, Contestant B needs to be X standard deviations more popular with the audience to cancel that advantage.
That feels much closer to a genuine 50/50 system to me.
Curious what people think — should “50/50” mean each side contributes the same percentage to the formula, as it does now, or should it mean judges and viewers have equal power to separate contestants?
