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Irish students create software program to predict TV talent show winners

By
DONAL THORNTON,
IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

Published Friday, January 15, 2010, 8:10 AM
Updated Friday, January 15, 2010, 8:15 AM

 

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Susan Boyle performs "I Dreamed A Dream" on "Dancing with the Stars"
The brainy boys were able to predict that Susan Boyle would come second in last year's "Britain's Got Talent"

Two young students from Gonzaga College in Dublin have devised a software program that can predict the results of TV talent shows.
 
The students were able to accurately predict the winners of last years, Britain's “X-Factor” competition and “Britain's Got Talent.”
 
Despite Susan Boyle’s popularity, they were able to show that she would come second to the eventual winner of BGT.
 
The students have created a software program that can accurately collect and analyze information on social networking sites such as Twitter.
 
The program identifies keywords such as good, bad, brilliant, poor and win. It then measures the frequency of words most likely to indicate a positive and negative opinion of a particular competitor and then calculates their probability of them winning.
 
The software was developed by Patrick O'Doherty (16) and Ben McRedmond (17) and took over five months to develop.

The program has a database of over 24.5million Twitter users. It can also be used to predict elections and brand awareness.

It effectively analyzes public opinion. All information on Twitter is openly available and usually the information is short and concise.

“We run analysis on the data to make predictions and identify trends, and we can take snapshots of time" said McRedmond.
 
The students recently showcased their findings at the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition in Dublin.
 
They analyzed Twitter information relating to Britain's "X-Factor" finalists Ollie Murs and Joe McElderry. They predicted that McElderry would win with 62 per cent of the vote. Incredibly Joe won the competition with 61 per cent of the vote.
 
They have also predicted that 3D television will flop. Apparently Twitter users were unimpressed by the technology showcased at last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

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