Friday, January 21, 2011

Tantalize

Just to tantalize you: the current top 12.

Arcade Fire The Suburbs 67.51
Weakerthans Reunion Tour 62.30
Yeah Yeah Yeahs It's Blitz 61.03
Sigur Ros Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust 60.32
Animal Collective Merriweather Post Pavilion 59.99
TV on the Radio Dear Science 59.66
Fleet Foxes Fleet Foxes 58.92
Deerhunter Microcastle/Weird Era Cont. 56.50
The Walkmen Lisbon 55.51
M83 Saturdays = Youth 55.46
Johnny Flynn A Larum 55.46
Explosions in the Sky All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone 55.46

But honestly, I don't see why we don't just call The New Pornographers the winners and be done with it.

6 comments:

  1. Don't worry Eric--I think your list has upset potential.

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  2. There is still plenty of room in places 13-64, right? I'm not too worried yet...though I'm wishing I had actually put My Brightest Diamond in there.

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  3. By the way, what is the algorithm for determining the top 12?

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  4. Algorithm is leftover from last year; I had tuned it to balance out selection of people's top picks with popular picks. I might have to tweak it again this year once all the selections are in, but here's how it works right now: Take two albums that Weakerthans contributed to:

    1|Weakerthans|Reunion Tour|Anne LaGrand|Weakerthans
    3|Weakerthans|Reunion Tour|Eric Arnoy|Weakerthans
    5|Weakerthans|Reunion Tour|Brad Allen|Weakerthans
    10|Jim Bryson & Weakerthans|The Falcon Lake Incident|Brad Allen|Weakerthans

    Reunion tower got a #1, #3, and #5 pick. But also, another album (at least partly) by Weatherthans got a #10 pick, and so Weakerthans as a band gets a (small) boost for both albums individually. Like this:

    Reunion Tour: 15 13 11
    score 15 index 0 discount 1.00 is 15.00, albumscore now 15.00
    score 13 index 1 discount 0.25 is 3.25, albumscore now 18.25
    score 11 index 2 discount 0.14 is 1.57, albumscore now 19.82

    15 points for a #1 pick down to only 6 points for a #10 pick. Votes from different people keep increasing the overall score, but they get discounted (or else popular picks would overwhelm top picks). So the #1 vote gets counted 100%, but then the #3 vote gets counted only 25%, and the #5 vote gets counted only 14%, etc. Total album score is a sum of discounted points, 19.82.

    Then for the band:

    Weakerthans: 15 13 11 6
    score 15 index 0 discount 1.00 is 15.00, artistscore now 15.00
    score 13 index 1 discount 0.33 is 4.33, artistscore now 19.33
    score 11 index 2 discount 0.20 is 2.20, artistscore now 21.53
    score 6 index 3 discount 0.14 is 0.86, artistscore now 22.39

    Same deal, but with the #10 vote for the other album.

    Then, for each of those two albums, their total score is a weighted sum of the album score and artist score. Currently the album score is weighted 15x higher than the artist score:

    Reunion Tour (Weakerthans)
    total 19.82 * (15/16) + 22.39 * (1/16) = 19.98

    The Falcon Lake Incident (Weakerthans)
    total 6.00 * (15/16) + 22.39 * (1/16) = 7.02

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