Ars Technica: political instability and inequality in society influenced the pace of Eurovision songs
This weekend, millions of people around the world watched Eurovision. Employees of the Ars Technica portal decided to conduct a not entirely standard study about the potential influence of political and economic factors on the rhythm of the participants' music.
The basis of the Ars Technica study was the measurement of the tempo of songs, taking into account the BPM rhythm (beats per minute), comparing the indicator for the tracks of each of the performers. All data was entered into the table, and then put on the chart, taking into account the Gini coefficient. This coefficient determines the level of social stratification and is calculated individually for each country - the higher the indicator, the greater the gap between the rich and the poor. Various studies have already proven that this coefficient demonstrates the level of social and political instability.
On the graph you can see how the Gini index correlates with BPM songs, but not in each of the cases. However, the average tempo of the songs is faster with more inequality. Using GraphPad Prism 7, the portal staff analyzed their hypothesis using the Student t-test tools for these results, which show the equality of the average values in the two samples. As a result, we managed to prove a statistically significant positive correlation of the tempo of the songs.
But if we continue the statistical analysis, we can see that economic inequality has little effect on the songs as a whole. Using linear regression analysis, which allows to determine the effect of independent variables on the dependent variable, it was possible to calculate the values of r = 0.2189, which gives the coefficient of determination r ^ 2 of 0.05. In simple terms - 5% of the difference in tempo between songs at Eurovision depends on the Gini coefficient.
Yet the Gini coefficient does have an indirect effect on the tempo of the music, but only in terms of displaying the level of stress among the population. Scientists have arguedthat stress affects the tempo of the compositions, and the Gini coefficient just reflects this. The faster the rhythm, the higher the level of stress among the population, which often depends on political instability and the level of social stratification.