The #1 choice doesn't have to be less than a majority to look for a secondary spike; it might have been a very obvious distractor, as Michael thought. I'd look for more a spread between the second choice and the third and fourth one, though; that would be an indication that nearly everyone (except for a small percentage who voted randomly) dismissed those choices and went with the obvious while those who really knew the answer caused the secondary spike. The 14% vote for Herman Wouk (who perhaps was a logical possibility, as the author of The Winds of War and The Caine Mutiny) was a bit high to make the vote for Mailer stand out.Appa23 wrote:I guess that people look at ATA results in different ways.slam wrote:The ATA pattern you got there was interesting. You had a clear secondary spike. Could it be that the audience knew, as you pointed out, that Michener wrote books with geographical titles and was heavily motivated by that? And that only the people who really knew the right answer responded with Mailer? At that level, there's some danger in misanalyzing ATA results.
With a 60% to 20% spread for the top two answers, I see no secondary spike and a clear indication that it is Michener. To me, secondary spikes occur on these lower dollar questions when the top answer is less than a majority, and the second chgoice is not that much less. There may have been instances on the show that are exceptions to my theory, where a contestant is "Dursted" by the audience based on such an overwhelming choice of a wrong answer.
But it's hard to judge these things when you know the answer.