Wow! What a killer line up the Hottest 100 of 2021 was! Triple J really mixed things up this year by playing the Hottest 200 the day before the Hottest 100. This gave us an upper hand to improve our predictions, by allowing us to eliminate songs from the Hottest 100 which had ranked in the Hottest 200 on the previous day. In doing so, we managed to take our top 100 prediction accuracy from 73% to 82% of the top 100 songs.
As per usual, this year we continued to collect data across the following five sources:
- Instagram Posts
- Instagram DMs
- Instagram Stories
- Twitter Posts
- Reddit Comments
Summary
- We collected 2,855 entries (41% decrease since 2020 🔻)
- We tallied 25,877 votes across these entries (39.7% decrease since 2020 🔻)
- triple j counted 2,500,409 votes.
- Therefore, we collected a sample of 1.04%.
- We successfully predicted #1
- We predicted 8 out of the top 10 songs.
- We predicted 14 out of the top 20 songs.
- We predicted 82 out of the top 100 songs played in the countdown.
- Throughout December and January, 100warmtunas.com was loaded over 182,000 times by 54,000 users.
Once again, despite collecting less data than previous years, we still maintained a relatively stable sample size of about 1%. This was due to the actual submitted vote count as reported by triple j also decreasing from 2,790,224 to 2,500,409.
Technical Analysis
This year, we were successfully able to predict #1 (Elephant [triple j Like A Version 2021] - The Wiggles) to win. Lets take a look at the top 10 of the official countdown and match it up with the predicted places in 100 Warm Tunas:
| Artist | Title | ABC Rank | Tunas Rank | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Wiggles | Elephant [triple j Like A Version 2021] | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| The Kid LAROI & Justin Bieber | Stay | 2 | 3 | 1 |
| Spacey Jane | Lots Of Nothing | 3 | 7 | 4 |
| Olivia Rodrigo | good 4 u | 4 | 4 | 0 |
| Billie Eilish | Happier Than Ever | 5 | 9 | 4 |
| Gang Of Youths | the angel of 8th ave. | 6 | 2 | 4 |
| Doja Cat | Kiss Me More [Ft. SZA] | 7 | 5 | 2 |
| Lil Nas X & Jack Harlow | INDUSTRY BABY | 8 | 13 | 5 |
| RÜFÜS DU SOL | On My Knees | 9 | 6 | 3 |
| Lil Nas X | MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name) | 10 | 18 | 8 |
Lets pull apart this table a bit more and grab some statistics about how we did with our prediction overall:
| Predicted | Out Of Top N | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| 8 | 10 | 80.0% |
| 14 | 20 | 70.0% |
| 20 | 30 | 66.7% |
| 28 | 40 | 70.0% |
| 35 (*34) | 50 | 70.0% |
| 43 (*42) | 60 | 71.7% |
| 52 (*49) | 70 | 74.3% |
| 62 (*55) | 80 | 77.5% |
| 72 (*61) | 90 | 80.0% |
| 82 (*73) | 100 | 82.0% |
| 152 | 200 | 76.0% |
From the above data, we can see that:
- The average error for the top ten ranks was about 3 positions (about the same as 2020 and 2019).
- Warm Tunas predicted 8 out of the top 10 songs.
- Warm Tunas predicted 14 out of the top 20 songs.
- Warm Tunas predicted 84 out of the 100 songs played in the countdown.
(note, asterisked values represent prediction without top 200 elimination)
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:
Accuracy of Predicted Ranks
Making exact predictions is difficult, especially when you only have a small fraction of the data. The data will generally give you a good indication, but will never allow you to predict, with certainty, that a particular outcome will occur. This is the reason we implemented confidence intervals on our predictions for the top 10.
The following tables depict the range of error exhibited across different cross-sections of the countdown.
Accuracy of the Top 10:
| Positions Off | Num Occurences | % | Positions Off (Cumulative) | Ocurrences | Cumulative % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0-4 | 8 | 80% | 0-4 | 8 | 80% |
| 5-9 | 2 | 20% | 0-9 | 10 | 100% |
Accuracy of the Top 20:
Across the top 20, 75% of our predictions were accurate within 9 places of their actual position in the countdown.
| Positions Off | Num Occurences | % | Positions Off (Cumulative) | Ocurrences | Cumulative % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0-9 | 15 | 75% | 0-9 | 15 | 75% |
| 10-19 | 1 | 5% | 0-19 | 16 | 80% |
| 20-29 | 1 | 5% | 0-29 | 17 | 85% |
| 30-39 | 1 | 5% | 0-39 | 18 | 90% |
| 60-69 | 1 | 5% | 0-69 | 19 | 95% |
| Did not rank | 1 | 5% | - | - | - |
Accuracy of the Top 50:
The trend continues across the top 50, with 48% of our predictions being accurate within 9 places of their actual position in the countdown and 74% being accurate within 29 places. This shows that 100 Warm Tunas is still reasonably good at predicting a general idea of what songs will play during the countdown.
| Positions Off | Num Occurences | % | Positions Off (Cumulative) | Ocurrences | Cumulative % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0-9 | 24 | 48% | 0-9 | 24 | 48% |
| 10-19 | 7 | 14% | 0-19 | 31 | 62% |
| 20-29 | 6 | 12% | 0-29 | 37 | 74% |
| 30-39 | 3 | 6% | 0-39 | 40 | 80% |
| 40-49 | 2 | 4% | 0-49 | 42 | 84% |
| 50-59 | 1 | 2% | 0-59 | 43 | 86% |
| 60-69 | 2 | 4% | 0-69 | 45 | 90% |
| 70-79 | 1 | 2% | 0-79 | 46 | 92% |
| > 80 | 2 | 4% | > 0 | 48 | 96% |
| Did not rank | 2 | 4% | - | - | - |
Accuracy of the Top 100:
For completeness, the accuracy bands of the top 100 have also been provided
| Positions Off | Num Occurences | % | Positions Off (Cumulative) | Ocurrences | Cumulative % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0-9 | 32 | 32% | 0-9 | 32 | 32% |
| 10-19 | 17 | 17% | 0-19 | 49 | 49% |
| 20-29 | 11 | 11% | 0-29 | 60 | 60% |
| 30-39 | 9 | 9% | 0-39 | 69 | 69% |
| 40-49 | 9 | 9% | 0-49 | 78 | 78% |
| 50-59 | 5 | 5% | 0-59 | 83 | 83% |
| 60-69 | 5 | 5% | 0-69 | 88 | 88% |
| 70-79 | 1 | 1% | 0-79 | 89 | 89% |
| > 80 | 4 | 4% | > 0 | 93 | 93% |
| Did not rank | 7 | 7% | - | - | - |
Vote Source Breakdown
100 Warm Tunas collects votes from a handful of different sources. Here is the break-down of how many votes were counted across the different sources:
| Source | Num Entries | Num Votes | Votes Per Entry |
|---|---|---|---|
| Instagram Feed | 2235 | 20531 | 9.1861 |
| Instagram DM | 481 | 4474 | 9.3015 |
| Instagram Story | 859 | 7238 | 8.4261 |
| 480 | 4150 | 8.6458 | |
| 137 | 1204 | 8.7883 | |
| Total | 4192 | 37597 | 8.9688 |
| Total (after de-duplication) | 4026 | 36156 | 8.9806 |
Vote Submissions
The most popular day for people to share their votes was the day before voting closed, with a spike of 344 entries collected, followed by the day after voting opened with 260 entries collected. We also observed a slight spike on the eve of Hottest 100 Day:
Our quietest day is observed to be Christmas day with only 6 submissions collected.
We can break down the votes collected for each song over time:
Wrap Up
This year, whilst picking the outright winner was a key highlight, we are most excited about being able to successfully predict 8 of the 10 of the songs which landed in the top 10. We believe this is the most important metric rather than exact positions. With the declining amount of data available, 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. See you next year!