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Wooden versus Steel Roller Coasters 2010 "Poll" Results
Out of the 900+ ballots received for the two polls in 2010, there were approximately 200 people
who voted in both polls. If the steel and wood ballots for those people are combined and analyzed,
some interesting data can be extracted.
Mutual rider comparisons for specific wood vs. specific steel coasters can be teased from the
data if it is assumed that e.g. the "Favorite Wood Coaster" in the steel poll is indeed the wood
coaster that they rated highest on their wood poll ballot.
Due to the unequal way in which coasters gained valid comparisons (for example, T-Express gained
few if any), a combined ranking is not forthcoming.
However, the 4 MB Excel spreadsheet contains mutual rider data between all 440+ coasters, the
most interesting of which are probably the comparisons between the top tier steel and top tier wooden
coasters. For example, it can be seen that two wooden coasters ('El Toro', 'The Voyage') beat every steel
coaster they were compared against by mutual riders. 'Boulder Dash' lost a narrow 5 to 4 decision to
'Expedition GeForce', but beat all other steel coasters it was compared against.
The top three steel coasters lost mutual rider comparisons to four, two, and nine wooden coasters,
respectively.
Perhaps you can glean more info nuggets of interest to you from the full mutual rider spreadsheet.
The spreadsheet should be read from left to right along the line for each of the top coasters listed
at the left. For instance, it can be seen that co-#1 Wooden Coaster 'El Toro' won the comparison with
the #1 Steel Coaster 'Bizarro' with 26 mutual riders preferring 'El Toro' and 14 preferring 'Bizarro'.
NOTES:
All ballots were parsed from text to Excel format, sorted, and combined. This was a rather
extensive process which may have resulted in a few changes to whether a few lines on a few
ballots were recognized properly. A few such ballots have since been repaired. Handling of
ballots with multiple #1 wooden or steel coasters was fixed, and an additional person's ballots
were combined, all resulting in small changes from what was originally posted here.
'Expedition GeForce' is the most notable beneficiary in that the comparison against 'Boulder Dash'
broke in its favor. Between that and the 'Balder' v. 'Bizarro' comparison breaking for 'Balder',
'EGF' moved ahead of 'Bizarro' and 'Boulder Dash' in the very tight #3 through #5 overall group.
To ease the conversion of the tabulation program, participation in this combination "poll" was
limited to the same number of coasters as the steel poll. The easiest solution was to include all
184 wood coasters and the top 259 finishers from the steel poll.
The new valid comparison requirement of three votes for or three votes against (rather than 3 total)
that was introduced in this year's steel poll was also used here.
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