Applications in Data Mining: Dancing with the Stars

APPLICATIONS IN DATA MINING Dawn L. Yilmaz Data Scientist, Television & Film VR Researcher & Content Creator

INTRODUCTION Dancing with the Stars (DWTS) is a U.S. reality format game show. On the show, celebrities team up with professional dancers and compete against each other in weekly elimination rounds.

The show is based on the popular British series "Strictly Come Dancing“ and is entering its 24th season later this year.

Description of the Domain Formulation of the Problem Scorecard Descriptive Statistics Numerical Summaries Visualizations And the Winner is ‌?

DESCRIPTION OF THE DOMAIN Our goal is to predict the winners of the upcoming season of Dancing with the Stars.

There are a number of predictive data mining functionalities that can be applied to the data to perform induction for the of dissemination of interesting patterns.

This report details a weighted index value model based on 36 underlying points of interest. The model uses DWTS historical and categorical data available on the web to mine and forecast a future DWTS winner.

In this season of all-stars, 10 dance teams will face off for the highly coveted Mirror-ball Trophy.

2016-2017 All-Star Dance Teams 1.

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5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

Lindsay Arnold Cusick & Emmitt Smith Keoikantse "Keo" Motsepe & Nicole Scherzinger Karina Smirnoff & Hines Ward Emma Louise Slater & Donald Driver Sharna May Burgess & Alfonso Lincoln Ribeiro Valentin "Val" Chmerkovskiy & Kristi Tsuya Yamaguchi Cheryl Stephanie Burke & Apolo Anton Ohno Derek Hough & Rumer Glenn Willis Mark Alexander Ballas, Jr. & Bindi Sue Irwin Witney Capri Carson McAllister & J.R. Martinez

Professional Dancers (PD)

Lindsay Arnold Cusick Mark Alexander Ballas, Jr. Sharna May Burgess Valentin "Val" Chmerkovskiy Witney Capri Carson McAllister

Cheryl Stephanie Burke Derek Hough Emma Louise Slater Karina Smirnoff Keoikantse "Keo" Motsepe

Celebrity Contestants (PD)

Kristi Tsuya Yamaguchi Apolo Anton Ohno Rumer Glenn Willis Bindi Sue Irwin J.R. Martinez

Emmitt Smith Nicole Scherzinger Hines Ward Donald Driver Alfonso Lincoln Ribeiro

FORMULATION OF THE PROBLEM

DANCECARD & SCORECARD • First Level Algorithm: Dance Score Card • Team Rank = Celebrity Contestant Composite Score + Professional Dancer Composite Score • Celebrity Contestant Composite Score = Personal Score + Seasonal Score • Professional Dancer Composite Score = Personal Score + Performance Score + Seasonal Score

• Second Level Algorithm: Final Score Card • Team Rank Value, • Team Value Against Other Opponents, • Whether the Professional Dancer won in the past, and • the number of wins in previous seasons.

FLOWCHART

DM TOOLS For this report, Excel was the primary tool used. A number of formulas were used, including, but not limited to; =STDEV =CORREL =AVERAGE =RANK.AVG =SUMPRODUCT =MAX / =MIN / =SUM Tableau was used to look at the data in various ways and for clustering, which was manually rolled into the final results.

Numerical Summaries

Descriptive Statistics

Central Tendencies, Mean, Median, Mode, Skewness, Standard Deviation, Histograms and Confidence Levels.

CELEBRITY CONTESTANT STATS

PROFESSIONAL DANCER STATS

THE MOST WINS 1. Derek Hough 2. Mark Alexander Ballas, Jr. 3. "Val" Chmerkovskiy

MOST TOP 2 / TOP 3 1. Lindsay Arnold Cusick 2. Mark Alexander Ballas, Jr. 3. Sharna May Burgess

THE MOST IMMUNITIES 1. Lindsay Arnold Cusick 2. Sharna May Burgess 3. Witney Capri Carson McAllister

MOST SAFES 1. Derek Hough 2. Cheryl Stephanie Burke 3. Mark Alexander Ballas, Jr.

HIGHEST COMPOSITE NOT ELIMINATED (NE) 1. Keoikantse "Keo" Motsepe 2. Emma Louise Slater 3. Mark Alexander Ballas, Jr.

MOST # PERFORMANCES 1. Derek Hough 2. Cheryl Stephanie Burke 3. Mark Alexander Ballas, Jr.

CORRELATION More Appearances = More Wins

Dancers who had appeared on the show for more seasons and those who had more performances had a greater chance of winning.

Playing it Safe

Dancer’s with a high percentage of “no elimination” and “safe” rankings, have a greater their chance to win the upcoming season. The “safe” ranking is the highest correlated attribute.

Top 3 Track Record

Dancers with a history of making it into the top 3 for a previous season have a stronger chance to win.

LAST TO BE CALLED SAFE

MOST BOTTOM 2 OR 3

MOST ELIMINATIONS

1. Emma Louise Slater 2. Witney Capri Carson McAllister 3. Keoikantse "Keo" Motsepe

1. Karina Smirnoff 2. Lindsay Arnold Cusick 3. Cheryl Stephanie Burke

1. Keoikantse "Keo" Motsepe 2. Emma Louise Slater 3. Karina Smirnoff

EXPERT ADVICE: GIL CHARLESTON Weights were created after consulting, actor and producer, Gil Charleston, who served as our DWTS expert.

Gil offered his personal and qualitative perspectives.

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Dance Background Performer (Television, Theatre, Film) Fan of Show

The winner has a… …30% …40% …50% …50%

chance chance chance chance

of of of of

having prior dance training. being a female. being married. being an athlete.

PROFESSIONAL DANCER RANKINGS RANK

DANCER

SCORE

1

Derek Hough

43.5

2

Cheryl Stephanie Burke

42.0

3

Mark Alexander Ballas, Jr.

38.0

4

Karina Smirnoff

33.0

5

Valentin "Val" Chmerkovskiy

9.5

6

Sharna May Burgess

1.5

7

Witney Capri Carson McAllister

-8.0

8

Emma Louise Slater

-19.5

9

Keoikantse "Keo" Motsepe

-24.0

Lindsay Arnold Cusick

-28.0

10

The winner has a… …30% …40% …50% …50%

chance chance chance chance

of of of of

having prior dance training. being a female. being married. being an athlete.

CELEBRITY CONTESTANT RANKINGS RANK

DANCER

SCORE

1

Emmitt Smith

35.0

2

Nicole Scherzinger

15.3

3

Hines Ward

14.8

4

Alfonso Lincoln Ribeiro

9.8

5

Donald Driver

7.3

6

Kristi Tsuya Yamaguchi

7.0

7

Apolo Anton Ohno

3.7

8

J.R. Martinez

-4.5

9

Bindi Sue Irwin

-11.0

Rumer Glenn Mills

-12.8

10

WEIGHT ADJUSTMENT NOTES 3 Rank Levels • Age • Broken down into 3 categories • Number of stars faced in the past season • 11, 12, or13 • Popularity • 3 tier Klout ranking • Estimates used for Bindi and J. R. 2 Rank Levels • Number of competition weeks • 10 vs 11 • Viewer Interest • Increase vs decrease

FINAL SCORECARD RESULTS

AND THE WINNER IS…?!

Top 3 All-Star Dance Team Predictions 1.

2.

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Derek Hough & Rumer Glenn Willis Cheryl Stephanie Burke & Apolo Anton Ohno Karina Smirnoff & Hines Ward

REFERENCES • American Broadcasting Company (ABC). (n.d.). Dancing with the Stars TV Show. Retrieved January 25, 2017, from http://abc.go.com/shows/dancing-with-the-stars • Graettinger, D. (2011). Dancing with the Stats (Discovery Corps Inc., Ed.). Retrieved January 25, 2017, from http://www.discoverycorpsinc.com/dancing-with-the-stats/ • Han, J., Kamber, M., & Pei, J. (2012). Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques (3rd ed.).

Amsterdam: Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann. Retrieved January 2, 2017, from http://ce.safaribooksonline.com/book/databases/data-warehouses/9780123814791/ • Wikipedia. (n.d.). Dancing with the Stars (U.S. TV series). Retrieved January 31, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_with_the_Stars_(U.S._TV_series)