Update 8/12/09

Fail

The short of it

£5 on Olly to be voted off the X-Factor tonight.

The long of it

If Derren Brown can predict the lottery using some of wisdom of the crowds shenanigans, surely we can predict the outcome of tonight's X-Factor with some of that buzz research stuff I've been posting about. The value of buzz research is something people talk about a lot. Is all this content we're monitoring actually telling us something useful, or it it just guff. To try and figure this out I'm going to run a bit of a pseudo-experiment. The table below shows the name of the X-Factor contestant, the odds they will be eliminated according to William Hill and the ratio of positive to negative mentions according to all the tweets, blogs etc picked up by social mention. My hypothesis is that the contestant with the lowest positive:negative ratio will be the one voted out.

Name	Odds	Positive:Negative
Olly Murs	4/6	4:1
Danyl Johnson	15/8	8:1
Stacey Solomon	5/1	11:1
Joseph McElderry	33/1	5:1

Looking at the table Olly has the lowest positive:negative ratio so I predict he's going to be kicked out this week. At 4/6 it's hardly worth a bet but in the name of pseudo-scientific-experiments I'll put £5 on Olly to be eliminated, and on the off chance we win I'll give the winnings to the next charity to jump me as I walk through Manchester city center.

Note

Looking at the table Jo looks like he's pretty likely to be voted out, however my expert X-Factor sources (my friends Jane & Matt) tell me that he's improved a lot over the last couple of weeks, which is probably why the odds from William Hill are a hefty 33/1.

Sources

• http://sports.williamhill.com/bet/EN/betting/e/729581/The%2DX%2DFactor%2D%2D%2D9th%2DElimination.html
• http://socialmention.com/search?q=olly+xfactor&t=all&btnG=Search
• http://socialmention.com/search?q=danyl+xfactor&t=all&btnG=Search
• http://socialmention.com/search?q=stacey+xfactor&t=all&btnG=Search
• http://socialmention.com/search?q=jo+xfactor&t=all&btnG=Search