An Examination of the Voting Biases Prevalent in American Idol - Nov. 4

Jason Gershman, Ph.D., assistant professor and coordinator of mathematics in the Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences Division of Math, Science, and Technology, will present “America’s Idol? How the Contestant Most Voted for Doesn’t Always Win” on Nov. 4 from 12 to 1 p.m., in the Mailman-Hollywood Building, room 310. The event is the fifth talk in the college’s new Mathematics Colloquium Series.

The reality television show American Idol is a hit among audiences, with each episode drawing millions of viewers. Its popularity stems in part because of viewer participation, in that Americans get the chance to “vote” for their favorite singers each season, eventually crowning a new idol. However, there are some biases in the show’s format, which display themselves in data charts and curves of contestants’ telephone voting patterns.

In this lecture, Gershman will examine bias such as issues of geography and performance order. The data used is intriguing because it comes from an extremely biased sample but leads to an unbiased population estimate. Overall, this is a fascinating-and somewhat counterintuitive-problem in applied probability and queuing theory.

All NSU students, faculty, and staff are welcome to attend this talk. For more information on this lecture or the college’s Mathematics Colloquium Series, please send email to Vehbi Paksoy, Ph.D., at or Iuliana Stanculescu, Ph.D.