## Why 58 Points?

This is a site about the nerdtastic side of the Eurovision Song Contest. We love pop music and mathematics. 58 points comes from the total number of points each participating country allocates in a semi-final or grand final:

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 10 + 12 = 58

The maximum number of points available in a semi-final or grand final for all entries is therefore the number of voting countries minus one (since you cannot vote for your own entry) times 58:

(N-1)*58

The number of voting countries is always more than the number of participating countries. In the semi-finals, half of the pre-qualified grand finallists (the Big 5 plus the host) vote in either semi-final. That means in a 17 song semi-final there are 20 voting countries (17+3). In a grand final all participants from that year–whether their entry has qualified for the grand final or not–vote.

Descriptive rather than inferential

You’ll perhaps notice a preponderance of descriptive statistics in this site and a surfeit of inferential ones. That is no accident. Our position is simple: there is no predictive value from previous years’ results to logically predict a future result.

Because:

• The central limit theory doesn’t apply to the overall set of Eurovision scores, since each year is an unique data set
• Under the current douze points Eurovision scoring system, results are purposely skewed: they’re not a Gaussian distribution
• Even with the douze points system we’ve had only juries, only televotes, integrated televotes+juries and now televotes+juries–so there’s no meaningful way to compare scores.
• Rankings we could compare more. But I don’t find that as interesting.
• The voting population varies every year, both for jurors and the televoting public

The current voting system is one of several that have been used over the decades: until 1997 the viewing public had little or no input on the results: juries determined the winner each year. Regardless, finding a completely accurate predictive model (i.e. regression) is a somewhat seductive idea…but that would also scrub out the magic of the show*.

We are not an official site or source for the Contest.

58points is almost entirely a JESC free zone. Ditto those other EBU sponsored and eurovision branded events.

*19/20 😉

No, we are not changing our name in light of the 2016 scoring system. After all, both the public and jury components still produce a score under the douze 58 points system. Sorry Spence!
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