This is our look at people eligible to be included in the voting pool for the upcoming Second Chance season, using solely a quantitative/statistical approach. Do we think these should have been the only people considered? No. But you could make a reasonable case that many of the top finishers deserve to have been in the mix.
Joe Reid at Grantland did an extensively researched version of this, but he made what we see as a fundamental error: he took a perfectly quantitative system (not unlike this one), then hamstrung it by tacking on qualitative assessments (season "popularity," appearances in "Next time on..." previews and "best moments" videos on YouTube). Those measures are dependent on the editing, and including them selects for drama (NaOnka) and "good TV," not necessarily performance. It elevates the people CBS/SEG/Jeff Probst want you to see, over a Sophie or a Denise Stapley who is quietly playing well. So we thought we'd see what the numbers say, just on their own. As it turns out, we already had a statistic that was essentially Joe's rankings minus the non-quantitative stuff: The No Jury stat.
So this is an adaptation of our "No jury" rankings, further restricting the pool to contestants that would be eligible to play in the Second Chance season (one time players, no winners). "No jury" is just good old SurvAv with the jury vote component removed, to put non-finalists on a slightly more even footing with people who made the finals. So it's purely Challenge performance + Tribal Council performance.
One caveat is obvious: As you might suspect from the glut of non-winning finalists, scores tend to increase with longevity, and being a member of a game-controlling alliance helps the Tribal Council component substantially. Normally with SurvAv, jury votes counteract that a bit. Not so here. With that in mind, we're fine with CBS/SEG tossing memorable pre-merge/early jury people into the voting pool, although we'd prefer those be people who were victims of twists, merges, and swaps, not people whose poor play got them voted out of an otherwise long-intact tribe.
Like Second Chance, we have separate pools of men and women, even though the overall number spreads are essentially the same, at least toward the bottom of the pool. (The only two men who scored above woman #24 were Dreamz and Jay Byars. We can live with not including them.). Instead of stopping at 16 men and women eacg, we extended those pools to 24 people, because why not? (Actually, we were going to do 16, but we noticed a large number of actual Second Chance-eligible people were in the 21-24 range. That and #17-24 for the women are all really good choices.)
The results: Surprising. We initially sorted using all non-winners making their first appearance. As it turned out, a huge number of the top finishers (9 of the top 20) had already made return appearances, so they had to be removed. Despite that winnowing of the field, a lot of the people CBS picked for Second Chance still don't show up in the rankings. (We've highlighted those that did.) Even extending the pool to 24 men, only 8 of the 16 men actually in the running for Second Chance made the cut. Same for the women, with only 7 of the actual eligible contestants. Conversely, in both cases there are a lot of players that fans have thought should have been included (Twila, Helen, Holly, Rafe, Ian, Sash).
*Artefact alert: We told you about the problem with Paschal in the Marquesas scoring (that he didn't receive any votes when he was eliminated by the purple rock, which inflates his Tribal Council stats). Without that artificially high wTCR, it's unlikely he'd be anywhere near as high as 2nd overall. A similar caveat applies to Mike Holloway and Carolyn Rivera, since their first seasons are still in progress, and their scores are not yet final. Also, note that both are among the top finishers ever. Hopefully one wins Worlds Apart, and the other makes it onto Second Chance.
**Didact alert: Technically, Burton already had a second chance in Pearl Islands.
So without further ado, here they are: The top Second Chance-eligible people, by the numbers. Click on contestant pics to view their complete contestant page (where available). If you need more numbers.
| Challenge stats | Tribal council stats | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rank | Contestant, season | Finish | ChW | ChA | ChW% | VFB | VAP | TC% | wTCR | No Jury |
| 1 |  |
2 | 5.87 | 15.10 | 0.39 | 6 | 0 | 0.55 | 3.82 | 9.69 |
| 2 |  |
2 | 2.87 | 13.29 | 0.22 | 11 | 1 | 1.00 | 5.60 | 8.47 |
| 3* |  |
5+ * | 3.80 | 10.80 | 0.35 | 7 | 3 | 0.77 | 3.11 | 6.91* |
| 4 |  |
3 | 1.64 | 11.02 | 0.15 | 12 | 1 | 0.92 | 5.17 | 6.81 |
| 5 |  |
2 | 1.00 | 13.60 | 0.07 | 7 | 1 | 1.00 | 5.60 | 6.60 |
| 6 |  |
2 | 2.70 | 10.71 | 0.25 | 9 | 2 | 0.82 | 3.82 | 6.50 |
| 7 |  |
3 | 3.05 | 13.81 | 0.22 | 9 | 4 | 0.90 | 3.15 | 6.20 |
| 8 |  |
4 | 4.13 | 10.58 | 0.39 | 7 | 6 | 0.69 | 1.96 | 6.09 |
| 9 |  |
4 | 2.97 | 13.30 | 0.22 | 7 | 3 | 0.77 | 3.11 | 6.08 |
| 10 |  |
4 | 2.64 | 11.02 | 0.24 | 11 | 3 | 0.84 | 3.38 | 6.03 |
| 11 |  |
6 | 3.35 | 9.71 | 0.35 | 4 | 4 | 0.65 | 2.33 | 5.68 |
| 12 |  |
6 | 3.54 | 8.94 | 0.40 | 6 | 4 | 0.59 | 2.10 | 5.64 |
| 13 |  |
2 | 2.34 | 15.33 | 0.15 | 9 | 4 | 0.89 | 5.15 | 5.49 |
| 14 |  |
2 | 3.10 | 11.83 | 0.26 | 9 | 7 | 0.89 | 2.29 | 5.40 |
| 15 |  |
2 | 0.99 | 13.36 | 0.07 | 5 | 0 | 0.63 | 4.38 | 5.37 |
| 16 |  |
2 | 1.08 | 13.81 | 0.08 | 9 | 2 | 0.90 | 4.20 | 5.28 |
| 17 |  |
3 | 2.17 | 10.57 | 0.21 | 9 | 5 | 0.99 | 3.11 | 5.28 |
| 18 |  |
4 | 2.93 | 11.13 | 0.26 | 6 | 5 | 0.74 | 2.33 | 5.27 |
| 19 |  |
2 | 2.34 | 14.24 | 0.16 | 11 | 6 | 0.99 | 2.80 | 5.14 |
| 20 |  |
5 | 3.12 | 11.97 | 0.26 | 6 | 6 | 0.66 | 1.87 | 4.99 |
| 21 |  |
7 | 3.01 | 9.33 | 0.32 | 3 | 5 | 0.58 | 1.87 | 4.88 |
| 22 |  |
3 | 1.63 | 12.94 | 0.13 | 9 | 2 | 0.69 | 3.23 | 4.87 |
| 23 |  |
5 | 3.58 | 11.30 | 0.32 | 5 | 8 | 0.49 | 1.17 | 4.75 |
| 24 |  |
4 | 1.82 | 11.77 | 0.16 | 10 | 4 | 0.83 | 2.92 | 4.74 |
| Challenge stats | Tribal council stats | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rank | Contestant, season | Finish | ChW | ChA | ChW% | VFB | VAP | TC% | wTCR | No jury |
| 1 |  |
3 | 9.34 | 14.67 | 0.64 | 4 | 1 | 0.40 | 2.24 | 11.58 |
| 2* |  |
5+* | 4.54 | 10.80 | 0.42 | 7 | 0 | 0.78 | 5.44 | 9.98* |
| 3* |  |
4 | 2.84 | 14.33 | 0.20 | 8 | 0* | 0.89 | 6.22 | 9.07 |
| 4 |  |
3 | 4.62 | 13.97 | 0.33 | 11 | 2 | 0.91 | 4.28 | 8.90 |
| 5 |  |
2 | 3.24 | 11.77 | 0.28 | 10 | 1 | 1.00 | 5.60 | 8.84 |
| 6 |  |
3 | 5.50 | 13.60 | 0.40 | 6 | 4 | 0.84 | 3.00 | 8.50 |
| 7 |  |
2 | 2.60 | 12.30 | 0.21 | 11 | 1 | 1.00 | 5.60 | 8.20 |
| 8 |  |
2 | 5.30 | 10.71 | 0.49 | 4 | 5 | 0.65 | 2.07 | 7.37 |
| 9 |  |
2 | 4.64 | 13.60 | 0.34 | 10 | 6 | 0.90 | 2.55 | 7.19 |
| 10 |  |
3 | 1.80 | 11.77 | 0.15 | 9 | 1 | 0.90 | 5.04 | 6.84 |
| 11 |  |
2 | 3.53 | 12.94 | 0.27 | 9 | 4 | 0.89 | 3.15 | 6.69 |
| 12 |  |
4 | 3.99 | 11.61 | 0.34 | 6 | 3 | 0.60 | 2.40 | 6.39 |
| 13 |  |
3 | 1.55 | 10.98 | 0.14 | 11 | 1 | 0.85 | 4.74 | 6.28 |
| 14 |  |
5** | 4.68 | 9.38 | 0.50 | 5 | 10 | 0.69 | 1.43 | 6.11 |
| 15 |  |
2 | 2.18 | 12.13 | 0.18 | 8 | 3 | 0.88 | 3.56 | 5.74 |
| 16 |  |
6 | 3.00 | 9.60 | 0.31 | 3 | 4 | 0.72 | 2.63 | 5.63 |
| 17 |  |
4 | 4.41 | 11.94 | 0.37 | 6 | 8 | 0.49 | 1.17 | 5.58 |
| 18 |  |
4 | 4.77 | 14.36 | 0.33 | 4 | 13 | 0.35 | 0.60 | 5.40 |
| 19 |  |
5 | 3.18 | 10.13 | 0.31 | 6 | 7 | 0.84 | 2.18 | 5.37 |
| 20 |  |
6 | 3.38 | 9.36 | 0.36 | 5 | 5 | 0.61 | 1.94 | 5.33 |
| 21 |  |
8 | 3.32 | 7.81 | 0.43 | 4 | 4 | 0.56 | 2.00 | 5.32 |
| 22 |  |
9 | 3.95 | 5.89 | 0.67 | 3 | 8 | 0.47 | 1.17 | 5.12 |
| 23 |  |
5 | 2.75 | 10.61 | 0.26 | 12 | 7 | 0.92 | 2.35 | 5.10 |
| 24 |  |
6 | 2.49 | 11.36 | 0.22 | 5 | 2 | 0.55 | 2.59 | 5.08 |
- ChW: Challenge Wins. For tribal challenges, a contestant earns a fraction of 1 win, depending on if they participated (no points for sitting out). So in a five-person tribe's win, each participant gets (1/5) of a point, or 0.2 points. Duels (or individual RCs as in Ep1) at Redemption Island count as half a challenge (and half a win). Individual challenge wins count as a full point.
- ChA: Challenge Appearances. Used to calculate ChW%. Fractional for tribal challenges (same as ChW), except sit-outs get charged for an appearance, because they could have participated.
- ChW%: Challenge Win%. Simply, ChW% = ChW / ChA.
- VFB: Votes For Bootee. The number of times the contestant has voted for the person who was ultimately voted out. Applies only to initial votes (no points for revotes in case of a tie). Special, odd case: In a final three TC, where only one vote is cast (by the F3 IC winner), both VFBs are counted, but only the single VAP counts.
- VAP: Votes Against the Player. The total number of tribal council votes cast against the contestant. Again, only initial votes count (no penalty for revotes), and here a hidden immunity idol (if played) erases the votes. In the special case of a final three tribal council above, only the F3 bootee receives a vote against.
- TotV: Total votes cast during the tribal councils the player has attended (again, only initial votes count). Used to adjust for different vote totals as tribes shrink.
- TCA: Tribal council appearances. The number of times a contestant has attended tribal council (at which they voted).
- TC%: Tribal Council percent. Attempts to reward voting for the bootee (which players controlling the vote almost always do), while punishing receiving votes yourself. The formula is: TC% = [VFB - (VAP/TotV)] / TCA.
- wTCR: weighted Tribal Council Ratio. Very similar in intent to TC%, but calculated as a ratio of VFB to VAP, while also scaling to a uniform number of TC appearances. The formula is as follows: wTCR =2* [VFB / (4+VAP)] x (14/TCA). I originally tried (1+VAP) to avoid dividing by zero, but this overly rewarded getting zero votes against relative to just one vote against, which seemed silly. (4+VAP) scaled that effect back comfortably. 14 was used as the scaling factor for TC appearances because there are usually 14 episodes, then a final scaling factor of 2 to bring maximal scores up to roughly even with ChW and JV% high scores.
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