Tournament of Books discussion

Hi folks.
Now that the first round is done and the Zombie discussion is officially underway, I wanted to open up a thread for you guys to ask questions about the statistics/process of this whole thing. I'm starting to organize the things that I think are interesting so that I can share them, but I don't want to just share the things that I find interesting, I also want to make sure that I answer your burning questions. So let me know what you want me to figure out!

Things I'm already planning on answering:
What would the top 16 have looked like if we only had one round of voting?
Did any books get zero votes in the first round? If so which ones?
Who would have been the zombies without a separate zombie poll?

My list of questions (so far) is:
- original rankings & number of votes for the 34 on the longest;
- original rankings & number of votes for the 16 on the shortlist

I don't want to make extra work for you, Maggie, but I'd be interested in reading whatever you want to share. :-)

Thanks for all you're doing already!

I don't have a bracket, is there a bracket somewhere?

Bob wrote: "I don't have a bracket, is there a bracket somewhere?"

bracket posted 04-23-2021 at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

Thanks for being faster than me Phyllis!

The remaining schedule for those that don't want to bother with the bracket:

Thursday 10/28: Semifinal 1: Pachinko vs. Version Control
Friday 10/29: Semifinal 2: The Tsar of Love and Techno vs. Stephen Florida (and announcement of the final Zombies
Monday 11/1: Zombie Round 1 (Winner Pachinko vs. Version Control vs Zombie A)
Tuesday 11/2: Zombie Round 2 (Winner The Tsar of Love and Techno vs. Stephen Florida vs. Zombie B)
Wednesday 11/3: FINAL
Thursday 11/4: Maggie posts all the stats stuff

Thanks Maggie!

Thanks Maggie, thank you Phyllis for the bracket.

Maggie, is one of the stats you're tracking the one that compares which books are mentioned first in the judgment vs. which books actually win? That's always fun...

Bob wrote: "Thanks Maggie, thank you Phyllis for the bracket.

Maggie, is one of the stats you're tracking the one that compares which books are mentioned first in the judgment vs. which books actually win? T..."

ooooooh No. We should look at that, but I've mostly done stats on the surveys for selecting the books!

Hi Maggie, if it's not too much trouble, do you have an easy way of counting how many people voted for favorites? And how many voted for The Animators to zombie? (It seems like none of the regular commenters have come out to say it's their favorite, which makes me so interested about how it's come this far!)

Elizabeth wrote: "Hi Maggie, if it's not too much trouble, do you have an easy way of counting how many people voted for favorites?"

Absolutely.

Summary of the things that I have so far:
- Number of ballots submitted for each round (there was nothing stopping someone from submitting multiple ballots).
- Number of total votes (for rounds where multiple votes were allowed),
- votes per ballot,
- the winner, the cutoff, the ones that just missed the cutoff in each round.

I've also figured out:
- Number of books that got zero or only one vote in the first round.
- The books that would have made the top 16 if we did only one round,
- the books that only made the top 16 because of improved performance in the second round.
- The books that showed the biggest change in rank between rounds
- The books that would have been the zombies if we hadn't had separate zombie voting.
- The most popular year in terms of total number of votes received in the first round

I have put the raw numbers from all three of the surveys into google sheets, and I'll share the spreadsheets that you can answer any questions that you have that I didn't get to.

If anybody has other questions that they want me to tackle over the weekend, let me know! I'm nerdy about this stuff

Wow! You're awesome, it'll be so interesting to see.

Of course the fun/frustrating/fascinating thing about all of TOB is the general arbitrariness, and I'm sure we'll see that here too.

Maggie wrote: ""

This is all very exciting - thank you so much, Maggie, for all of this fun extra work you are doing for us all!

Last call for questions that I might be able to answer with the information I already have! Final statistics on Thursday after the final tomorrow!

**The First Round of Voting**

Number of Eligible Books: 252

Number of Books That Were Actually On the Ballot: 249

Books That I Accidentally Left Off The Ballot: Fobbit (2013 Play-in Loser), The Yellow Birds (2013 Play-in Loser), The Vegetarian (2017 Zombie)

Apology: Folks, I am so sorry. I didn't realize that I made this mistake until I was doing this final analysis last week, well after all the decisions were made. I think that it's very unlikely that missing Fobbit or The Yellow Birdsinfluenced the outcome. However, The Vegetarian, as a recent zombie, was a real contender, and not having it on the ballot may very well have actually changed the tournament that we got. It was not at all intentional. (I don't even think that it was a Freudian-type mistake, although I admit, as a psychiatrist, I hated that book.) I'm human, I goofed, there's nothing for it but to say that I am sorry, and that I hope that the fans of The Vegetarian can forgive me. I hope we can all agree that this was an awful lot of fun anyway (and that next time, when I make the surveys, we should have someone without ADHD double check my work.)

Moving On:

Total Ballots:172

Total Votes: 2489

Mean number of books per ballot: 14.5

Fewest Number of Books on a Single Ballot:1 (a vote for Milkman)

Cutoff to reach the next round: 25 votes, 14.5% of ballots

Books that Just Missed the Cut: 24 votes: Goodbye, Vitamin 23 votes: Annihilation, The Idiot, Trust Exercise

Books on the ballot that got zero votes: 52 (20.9% of books actually on the ballot)

Books that got only one vote: 20 (8% of the books on the ballot)

Book that got the most votes: Milkman (59 votes, 34.3% of ballots)

Books that would have made the tournament if we'd only had one round of voting, but didn't after the second round: Sing, Unburied, Sing (7th), Lincoln in the Bardo (T-11th), The Song of Achilles (T-13th), Salvage the Bones (15th), Where'd You Go Bernadette (16th)

Books that wouldn't have made the tournament if we'd only had one round of voting, but made it after the second round: There There (T- 32nd), Idaho (T-28th), Stephen Florida (T-28th), Exit West (T-28th), Nothing To See Here (18th)

Most Popular Year: 2018 - 20.65 votes per eligible book

Least Popular Year: 2005 - 3.87 votes per eligible book

Spreadsheet for people who want to see it:

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

The Second Round of Voting:

Number of Eligible books: 34

Total Ballots: 142

Total Votes:1901

Mean Number of Books Per Ballot: 13.4

Cutoff to reach the top 16: 57 Votes, 40% of ballots

Books that Just Missed The Cut: 54 Votes: Lost Children Archive, The Song of Achilles (It wasn't actually that close. Sorry, I bluffed.)

Books that Got The Fewest Number of Votes: Half of a Yellow Sun (37 votes) (Probably related to the discussion of the author expressing transphobia) and Where'd You Go Bernadette (38 votes)

Book with the greatest number of votes: Homegoing (92 votes - 64.8% of ballots)

Book with the biggest change in position: Idaho and Stephen Florida (both up 18 places from T-28th to T-10th)

Books that would have Zombied if I hadn't done separate zombie voting: Homegoing and Milkman

Spreadsheet for people that want to see it:

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

The Zombie Voting:

Total Number of Ballots: 89

Top Overall Vote Getter: Milkman (18 votes - 20.9%)

Bottom Overall Vote Getter: Exit West(1 vote - 1.2%)

Books with the biggest change in position from round 2: Version Control (up seven from T-10th to 3rd) Homegoing (down seven from 1st to 8th) and Nothing To See Here (down seven from 7th to 14th)

Fun Facts:

- The Zombies were the top two vote getters in the zombie voting (Milkman 1st, The Animators 11 votes, 12/78%, 2nd)
- The zombie round featured the top four in the zombie voting (Version Control 9 votes, 10.47%, 3rd, The Tsar of Love and Techno 8 votes, 9.3%, 4th)

Spreadsheet for people that want it:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

This is all so intriguing, Maggie. Thank you for doing this analysis and sharing the results, here in narrative and also by giving us access to your spreadsheets. It's especially interesting that the top four zombie votes ended up squaring off at the end.

(FYI, the zombie spreadsheet is not allowing access)

Maggie wrote: "**The First Round of Voting**

Number of Eligible Books: 252

Number of Books That Were Actually On the Ballot: 249

Books That I Accidentally Left Off The Ballot: Fobbit (2013 Play-in Loser), The ..."

Great stuff - thank you!!

Also, isn't it interesting that Idaho and Stephen Florida ran neck-and-neck in both Round 1 and Round 2?!?

This is so interesting Maggie. I’m at work and don’t have time to study the spreadsheets. Will do that later. But, for the record, it was not me who had Milkman as the single entry on a ballot. 😊. I do like other books. 😊. For example, I just realized that The Idiot beat White Tears in whatever year that was. Boo hiss. I love White Tears. But no one talks about The Idiot. Does anyone like that book?

I think I fixed the link for the Zombie spreadsheet. I corrected it in the post above but here it is.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

Maggie wrote: "I think I fixed the link for the Zombie spreadsheet. ..."
Thank you, Maggie! It worked just fine (for me) with the new link.

Fascinating that the top 4 zombie vote getters were the actual contenders in the zombie round, but the finalists were in 3rd and 4th place, with the winner being 4th place in the zombies.

Bryn wrote: "no one talks about The Idiot. Does anyone like that book?. ..."

I remember it being another love-it-or-hate-it book. I loved it. (But I still would have picked =Milkman= for the win.)

Very interesting! Thanks Maggie! So much work but so fun. I forgive you for the three missing books. I would have missed more than three.

Seeing these lists of books just brings back SO MUCH love for them. I also love seeing the books that had zero votes, as it actually makes me want to read some of them even more. I WAS THE ONE VOTE FOR CALL ME ZEBRA. haha.

Some surprising books with no votes:
Remainder by Tom McCarthy that made it to second place.
My Revolutions by Hari Kunzru because of the ToB's usual love of Kunzru
A Gate At the Stairs - Lorrie Moore - I remember there was some love for this.
We Cast a Shadow! I loved that one!

Bryn wrote: "TI just realized that The Idiot beat White Tears in whatever year that was. Boo hiss. I love White Tears. But no one talks about The Idiot. Does anyone like that book?"

I LOVED The Idiot. I laughed all the way through reading it. But White Tears, which was so amazing, was my pick to win the TOB that year and I was dissapointed that it didn't go all the way.

Ruthiella wrote: "Bryn wrote: "TI just realized that The Idiot beat White Tears in whatever year that was. Boo hiss. I love White Tears. But no one talks about The Idiot. Does anyone like that book?"

I LOVED The Id..."

I got a kick out of the Idiot, as well. (And another big clue that Ruthiella and I could become really good friends! LOL)

Bryn wrote: "This is so interesting Maggie. I’m at work and don’t have time to study the spreadsheets. Will do that later. But, for the record, it was not me who had Milkman as the single entry on a ballot. 😊. ..."

I really loved the first half of The Idiot. And that author is one of the handful I'm always checking up on to see when their next book is coming (many of those I check on are ToB authors - Emily Ruskovich (Idaho), Gabe Habash (you know), Anthony Marra).....

Jenny (Reading Envy) wrote: "I really loved the first half of The Idiot. And that author is one of the handful I'm always checking up on to see when their next book is coming"

Well look what I just saw! Not sure we needed a sequel, but we’ll soon have one.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...

Elizabeth wrote: "Not sure we needed a sequel."

I needed a sequel! Thanks for the great news!

"Well look what I just saw! Not sure we needed a sequel, but we’ll soon have one"

Thanks Elizabeth! I need the sequel. I want to go through all four years of undergrad with Selin.