Alright, we are 25% done with the tournament and 50% done with the first round! Dork alert, here comes some math: In any given tournament of 2^x rounds, where x>1, the number of matches in any given round will be equal to the number of matches remaining minus 1. For example, if it was an 8 song tournament, 8=2^3, so you’ve got 3 rounds. There are 4 matches in the first round, which is equal to the matches in the consequent rounds minus 1 (2 matches in the Final Four + 1 Championship=3. 4-3=1.) This may seem simple, but whatever.

Still in contention for the Marathon Voter award are the following voters who have not missed a match: Salem, Amanda, Chris Roomba (what up!), Daddy-O (the voter formerly known as the Progenitor,) Democratic Adam, Eileen, Greg, Mark B, and Natalie. Joe gets an honorary spot as well, as he elected not to vote on an early match but voted on the other songs.

Alright more fun with numbers. Here’s a chart of not only the top 8 winners of the week by average score, but also with standard deviations:

Now, as a reminder, standard deviation is a measure of how spread out the scores are from the average. A low standard deviation means that more people gave the song scores closer to its eventual average; so if you had two data sets, one with scores of 5, 4, and 6 and the other with scores of 5, 1, and 9, they would both have the same average (5) but drastically different standard deviations (1 versus 4.) Here’s the formula:

A song with a lower standard deviation should thus be more reliable going forward in theory, as most people are in agreement on its high score and it has less haters. And in short, “Man On Fire” is looking pretty strong with a high score and a low standard deviation.

Alright, that’s enough. Next set of songs goes live Sunday night- this week we’ve got another dose of both Coldplay and the Boss, an electro-rock showdown between Placebo and Phoenix, and a slew of other fun old/new/new to you things coming. See you in the comments!

g-mo