Your X Factor vote could help predict future riots or the result of the next general election.
XfactorTracker.com predicts the outcome of X Factor each week, but the science behind is building a new way of analysing and predicting major world events.
"We're predicting offline behaviour by monitoring buzz. We look at a range of social media platforms, not just the biggest ones. Then we use natural language processing to tell what people like, and that tells us how people are really going to behave," says Noreena Hertz, the Cambridge social scientist behind the project.
The data diving in XFactorTracker is more complex that just adding up Facebook likes or Twitter hashtags. "We add social science to the calculations, so we're doing more than just adding up mentions. People don't actually always do what they say they will, even if they tweet that they don't like someone on X Factor. We have insight into social behaviour which we use to make predictions."
You might not realise it, but Hertz says we're all programmed to behave in certain ways, and XFactorTracker's algorhythm can read that. "The running order, for instance, has a huge effect on the way people vote in X-Factor," she says.
Stars and fans alike have been using the service, and Hertz says Kitty was asking her fans to vote as she could see her rating drop on XFactorTracker.
X Factor voters and those with their favourite stars will know that unexpected exits and wins each week. "The results can look strong and then flip. Amelia and Misha flipped at 8:10pm on the Sunday evening just before lines close. Janet was also close."
The system has already been tested on So You Think You Can Dance, where the team processed 300,000 tweets in 24 hours to calculate the winner.
Do they ever get it wrong? "We got it wrong with Misha. it was the bullygate story, and our computer didn't recognise that bully was a bad word. We have to manually enter positive or negative next to words, and we hadn't entered anything next to bully. We realised that the system need much more manual entries, so we learned from that."
There's big money to be had in guessing the X Factor winner. A persistant rumour in media circles has it that an employee from another online voting company won the enough to make a deposit on a house after guessing the winner of last year's X-Factor.
William Hill's odds on X Factor winners have Little Mix at 5/4 and Misha at 8/1.
Who should we be putting out money on according to XFactorTracker? "Little Mix is looking strongest to win, according to the calculations, but the votes are close!" says Hertz.