Huffington Magazine Issue 35-36 | Page 26

THE OSCAR ISSUE / HUFFINGTON / 02.10-17.13 v o i c e s bric, Lincoln has a slightly healthier $6.8 million to $4.7 million, but this is a not a significant difference. david rothschild Accountants from PricewaterhouseCoopers prepare ballots at the 84th Academy Awards Final Oscar Ballot mailing. ALBERTO E. RODRIGUEZ/GETTY IMAGES SUBJECTIVE RATING: This category includes variables like: popular and critical ratings, along with the MPSAA rating. In the battle between popular and critical ratings the people win! Popular ratings dwarf the critical ratings in predictive power. Interestingly, Lincoln and Argo are tied in critical ratings, but Argo is leading Lincoln 93 to 86 in popular ratings. OSCAR NOMINATIONS: It is no surprise that that the Oscar voters value their own judgment, and movies with more nominations tend to do well in winning Oscars! There is significant and meaningful predictive power in the number of Oscar nominations a movie receives. In this category, Lincoln dominates with 12 nominations to Argo’s 7 nominations. BIOGRAPHICAL DATA: This category includes variables like: age, previous nominations, previous wins, and lifetime wins. Nominations and wins certainly have predictive power in the four main categories of: actor, actress, supporting actor and supporting actress. For these categories more nominations is a positive predictive sign. While not the case in the main categories, in less well-known categories, repeated victories by the same people are more common and, correlate significantly with victory. David Rothschild is an economist who works for MSR-NYC studying social media data, polling, and markets.