Is being in the bottom 3 actually helpful?

[soflat]

I think because it is private, they will still like Fred because they liked him for something other than his perfect pitch. If they like polished, technically perfect singers like Shrek, they would have been voting Shrek all along. I dount they would vote for a soul diva if they really like country rock.

[pete fabrizio]

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My point is that the "bottom 3 helps rally the troops" belief is probably overdone (and yes, largely bolstered by the regression fallacy). The fact that people drift in and out of the bottom 3 is perfectly consistent with normal variance. What the bottom 3 indicates to me is that the contestant is not very popular and didn't have a very good performance. Normally that's bad news.

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This all seems right.

Being in the bottom 3 is obviously a bad sign because it means you aren't very popular with the voters. But that's not the question I had in mind when I started this thread. Let me restate the issue with a current example.

An unknown performer ("Fred") finished in the bottom three this week. Did American Idol help or hurt Fred by not announcing that he was in the bottom 3?

1. The standard assumption seems to be that this hurts Fred. He's going to miss out on the rallying effect.

2. My intuition is that this actually helps Fred. Most people constantly seek validation of their personal opinions, especially in subjective matters like clothes and music. Seeing Fred in the bottom 3 would have caused many of his fans to start doubting their own ears. Next week instead of enjoying his performance they would subconsciously be picking it apart.

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I'm sure both of these effects (rallying and tarnishing) are real and do happen, I'm just not sure to what extent, and looking at the history of the thing doesn't help much.

On balance, I think there may be a minor rally right after someone reasonably popular appears in the b3 for the first time, but in the long run the tarnish probably hurts them more.

[Aloysius]

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On balance, I think there may be a minor rally right after someone reasonably popular appears in the b3 for the first time, but in the long run the tarnish probably hurts them more.

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This sounds about right to me also. Over time, if the unpopularity / badness of a contestant continues to get reinforced (I think Brandon from this season might be a good example of this)... voters will start questioning their choice and move on.

-Al