Tomorrow's Eurovision final forecasted with Bayesian statistics
mewo2.com
mewo2.com
http://i.imgur.com/MoTQRRZ.jpg
My call: Ireland will place in the top-5.
For the record, Ireland came last, 26 out of 26, with about 3 votes in total.
So I'm a physicist too and let me tell you: Take these calculations with a grain of salt. It is very easy to underestimate the complexity of what actual people do.
Voting blocks exist and they do skew the results, but they are not strong enough to determine the winner alone, despite what many commentators in the third world of Eurovision (UK, Germany) think. So far, no song has won Eurovision without getting a lot of points from countries outside its alleged voting block. Other biases in the system are also present, such as an unfair advantage for western europeans due to the juries, and the four orders in magnitude difference between vote weight.
If you watch it (or make simulations on it) without the intention of just having some harmless fun, you're doing it wrong.
Edit: Now I realize the parent was just being sarcastic. Anyway, it's good to set the record straight.
Double edit: Come to think of it, that was a bit of like 'the most hated countries' list. Or maybe the most isolated. Good stuff!
A song that gets played on the radio in Britain is likely to get a lot of airplay in Ireland, and the Irish vote will go to the familiar British artist. If someone's on Europa Plus in Moscow every hour, chances are the stations in Ukraine and Latvia and so on will also play them.
It's not down to "we really hate Britain, so let's all gang up and not vote for them," it's down to "we're familiar with the people who are celebrities in our own region of Europe." The Eurosceptic British media would like us to think the rest of Europe dislikes us, hence the "political voting," "let's just leave Eurovision" narrative that comes out in the press every May.