Prediction Analysis Decade 2010s

Throughout the last 6 weeks, 100 Warm Tunas has been aggregating your votes posted to popular social networks to provide the internet's most accurate prediction of triple j's Hottest 100 of the Decade.

Summary

  • We collected 3,181 entries.
  • We tallied 29,123 votes across these entries.
  • triple j counted approximately 1,800,000 votes.
  • Therefore, we collected a sample of 1.62%.
  • 11.2% of votes were collected via Instagram direct message.
  • We did not successfully predict #1
  • We predicted 6 out of the top 10 songs.
  • We predicted 25 out of the top 30 songs.
  • We predicted 79 out of the 100 songs played in the countdown.

Evidently the amount of data collected was less than the Hottest 100 of 2019 however, our prediction still performed better when looking at the overall count of predicted songs in the top 100.

Technical Analysis

Similar to the Hottest 100 of 2019, we were not able to predict the outright winner of the countdown ,however we did successfully predict 25 of the songs to rank in the top 30.

Lets take a look at the top 10 of the official countdown and match it up with the predicted places in 100 Warm Tunas:

ArtistTitleABC RankTunas RankDifference
Tame ImpalaThe Less I Know The Better154
GotyeSomebody That I Used To Know {Ft. Kimbra}264
Arctic MonkeysDo I Wanna Know?330
Violent SohoCovered In Chrome413
RUFUS DU SOLInnerbloom541
Gang Of YouthsMagnolia624
Foster the PeoplePumped Up Kicks7136
FlumeNever Be Like You {Ft. Kai}8157
Angus & Julia StoneBig Jet Plane92112
Matt CorbyBrother10111

Lets pull apart this table a bit more and grab some statistics about how we did with our prediction overall:

PredictedOut Of Top NPercentage
61060.0%
142070.0%
253083.3%
324080.0%
395078.0%
506083.3%
587082.9%
648080.0%
729080.0%
7910079.0%
15520077.5%

From the above data, we can see that:

  • The average error for the top ten ranks was 4.2 positions.
  • Warm Tunas predicted 6 out of the top 10 songs.
  • Warm Tunas predicted 14 out of the top 20 songs.
  • Warm Tunas predicted 25 out of the top 30 songs.
  • Warm Tunas predicted 79 out of the 100 songs played in the countdown.

To compare Warm Tuna's predictions vs actual rankings, a scatter plot has been provided below. We can see as we get closer to rank 1, the 100 Warm Tunas prediction gets better and converges upon the actual rankings played out on the day:

Vote counts over time

Throughout the voting period, we observed a few key changes to the top 10, observing Magnolia and Do I Wanna Know competing for 2nd place in the prediction, as well as The Less I Know The Better and Innerbloom competing for 4th place in the prediction. This is potentially the most movement we have seen in a prediction since starting the project.

Vote counts by social network

The following table provides a break-down of vote counts per social network. There are some strong biases depending on which sources are included when producing rankings for the prediction:

Song TitleInsta. FeedInsta. StoryTwitterRedditInsta. DMSumTotal
Covered In Chrome - Violent Soho31458202767486479
Magnolia - Gang Of Youths21256293081408394
Do I Wanna Know? - Arctic Monkeys18356432357362357
Innerbloom - RUFUS DU SOL18543313161351344
The Less I Know The Better - Tame Impala12053383476321315
Somebody That I Used To Know {Ft. Kimbra} - Gotye16145381336293287
It's Nice To Be Alive - Ball Park Music16239261837282270
Breezeblocks - Alt-J16429151539262254
Midnight City - M8314130222327243240
Runaway {ft. Pusha T} - Kanye West12122342140238237
Brother - Matt Corby1294820334234233
Royals - Lorde11638311423222216
Pumped Up Kicks - Foster the People10845221432221214
Let It Happen - Tame Impala8727264536221213
Never Be Like You {Ft. Kai} - Flume1254516927222213
Clair De Lune {Ft. Christine Hoberg} - Flight Facilities1193118723198189
Let Me Down Easy - Gang Of Youths8633211730187183
King Kunta - Kendrick Lamar9425201524178175
Tokyo (Vampires & Wolves) - The Wombats8630181732183174
Video Games - Lana Del Rey10028231015176171

For example, if we only count votes from Instagram Stories, we are able to predict the 10 songs to place in the top 10 (ignoring order). By counting just Instagram Direct Messages and Twitter submissions, we are able to predict 1st place.

Finally, by excluding data collected from Instagram Feed, but using all other sources (Instagram DM, Instagram Story, Twitter, Reddit), we are able to provide a reasonably accurate prediction of the top 10:

ArtistTitleABC RankTunas RankDifference
Tame ImpalaThe Less I Know The Better110
GotyeSomebody That I Used To Know {Ft. Kimbra}264
Arctic MonkeysDo I Wanna Know?330
Violent SohoCovered In Chrome440
RUFUS DU SOLInnerbloom550
Gang Of YouthsMagnolia624
Foster the PeoplePumped Up Kicks7103
FlumeNever Be Like You {Ft. Kai}8168
Angus & Julia StoneBig Jet Plane92314
Matt CorbyBrother10111

This trend continues throughout the result set:

PredictedOut Of Top NPercentage
71070.0%
142070.0%
273090.0%
334082.5%
395078.0%
476078.3%
547077.1%
618076.2%
739081.1%
8010080.0%
15420077.0%

The accuracy of the top 10 is at 70%, the top 30 at 90%, and the top 100 at 80%. Whilst the accuracy across the top 200 stays almost constant these are some clear improvements over the results when Instagram feed images are included.

This trend is really interesting because counting just these sources means only 12,247 votes across 1,352 entries are counted toward the tally (compared to 29,123 across 3,181 entries). Perhaps this bias is an indication that it might be time to pull the plug on collecting data from the Instagram Feed and rely on these newer, more accurate sources?

Social Network Breakdown

We are now collecting votes from a handful of different sources. Here is the break down of how many votes were counted across the different sources:

SourceNum EntriesNum VotesVotes Per Entry
feed1888173839.2071
story49043308.8367
twitter35732629.1373
reddit_submission_comment16914828.7692
direct_message35633449.3933
Sum3260298019.1414
Sum (after de-duplication)3181291239.1553

Vote Submissions

It comes as no surprise that the most popular day for people to share their votes was on the day of voting opened with 442 entries collected, followed by the day voting closed with 391 entries collected.

Wrap Up

Whilst we didn’t pick the outright winner, we did successfully predict 25 of the 30 of the songs which landed in the top 30, as well as 79 of the top 100. As mentioned in the 2019 countdown wrap-up, with the shrinking amount of data and general biases across different voting sources, it’s getting harder and harder to pick the outright winner with certainty.

We'd like to thank everyone who shared their votes, visited our site or interacted with us on Instagram. Without our audience, 100 Warm Tunas wouldn't be possible.

We are looking forward to running the prediction again in December for triple j’s Hottest 100 of 2020. Time to start collating that shortlist now!