ERIC Number: EJ1007723
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2013-Jan
Pages: 8
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0746-8342
EISSN: N/A
Suspense at the Ballot Box
Kell, Nat; Kretchmar, Matt
College Mathematics Journal, v44 n1 p9-16 Jan 2013
In the popular television show "Survivor", the winner of a million-dollar prize is determined in a final election, where the votes are read aloud as the winner is announced. We hypothesize that the show's producers purposely alter the order of the ballots in order to build audience suspense. We test our hypothesis using the Poisson binomial distribution, then turn to entropy to confirm that the ballot order is likely altered.
Descriptors: Mathematical Concepts, Mathematics Instruction, College Mathematics, Computation, Television
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A