Top 3 Tracker update: Amber still the least likely, but everyone’s up

Analysis after the jump.

This is the final round of the Top 3 tracker, obviously. 3 out of 4 of the remaining contestants will make the Top 3, meaning that they’re all more than likely. The Top 3 tracker has the most trouble picking the person to advance in this round. It thinks Angie finally rose after 4 straight weeks of decline. Amber is up sharply, but still lower than everyone else.

The Top 3 Tracker in this round (nominally round 9, so that it matches up with previous Top 4 years) makes use of an averaging scheme to provide a less noisy picture of the contest. For historical context, here are the average round 7 through round 9 not-safe probabilities plotted against whether or not the person made the Top 3 (if the dot is at the top (1) then he or she did make the Top 3, and if it’s near the bottom (0) he or she did not. Some vertical jitter has been introduced to make the dots visible.).

Hover your cursor over the points to see which past contestants they correspond to. James Durbin with a score of 0.24 was the most likely person to advance that didn’t. Jason Castro, at 0.33, was the second to highest. Out of 11 people with scores lower than 0.33, 9 advanced and 2 did not. All but Amber have scores less than this, making Amber somewhat less likely, but by no means unthinkable, to make it.

The Top 4 has had some of the biggest surprises. Think about Nikki McKibbon getting in but Tamyra Gray not. Chris Daughtry was considered a shoo in, but was eliminated. Hardly anyone thought Syesha Mercado would make it over Jason Castro, but she did. Finally, James Durbin, the first time he had ever been in the bottom group, was eliminated over Haley Reinhart, who had been in the bottom 3 four times.

Note that the lowest three points correspond to people who won. Angie is right in the middle of this group, making it seem like she will probably win the year. However, seasons 8 and 9 winners Lee DeWyze (0.38) and Kris Allen (0.52) were considerably higher, so really anyone could win without it being a record (everyone has a better score than Kris Allen).