As I said at the beginning of the year, my sole aim this season was to build a predictive model worth a damn, just to see if it could be done. In the end, the model was 93% accurate in calling people safe (including winner Candice Glover tonight) and picked the person eliminated 78% of the time (89% of those eliminated were ranked either first or second most likely to go, FWIW). That’s pretty decent.
The site found an audience, as well, which I suppose I’m happy about. The site was the top Google search for “Idol predictions” as of yesterday, and about 6000 unique visitors showed up to see the (thankfully correct) call of Candice as winner. About 3000 people found their way to the site weekly, on average, during the finals.