Predicting the Winner of Survivor David vs Goliath

I’m super late to the party this year, but I finally have some Survivor Season 37 rankings up!

Below are rankings from Week 1 through Week 12 based on a machine learning approach I started back in Season 35. If this is your first time here, you can read all about the details of the project here.

The quick and dirty version is that we use volunteers to collect data about player behaviors on an episode by episode basis, then using the data from existing seasons we train a machine learning classifier to calculate the probability that a given player after each episode is a likely winner or not.

Winner Predictions Episode by Episode

For these predictions, I trained a Naive Bayes classifier based on 33 previous seasons of data. This is the exact same model I used last season.

Week 1:

1. Alison Raybould
2. Bi Nguyen
3. Kara Kay
4. John Hennigan
5. Natalia Azoqa
6. Davie Rickenbacker
7. Elizabeth Olson
8. Dan Rengering
9. Gabby Pascuzzi
10. Angelina Keeley
11. Jeremy Crawford
12. Alec Merlino
13. Carl Boudreaux
14. Christian Hubicki
15. Lyrsa Torres
16. Mike White
17. Nick Wilson
18. Natalie Cole
19. Jessica Peet

Week 2:

1. Christian Hubicki
2. Davie Rickenbacker
3. Jeremy Crawford
4. Bi Nguyen
5. Kara Kay
6. Elizabeth Olson
7. John Hennigan
8. Alec Merlino
9. Alison Raybould
10. Carl Boudreaux
11. Natalia Azoqa
12. Angelina Keeley
13. Mike White
14. Gabby Pascuzzi
15. Lyrsa Torres
16. Nick Wilson
17. Dan Rengering
18. Natalie Cole

Week 3:

1. Christian Hubicki
2. John Hennigan
3. Davie Rickenbacker
4. Angelina Keeley
5. Bi Nguyen
6. Kara Kay
7. Alec Merlino
8. Alison Raybould
9. Elizabeth Olson
10. Mike White
11. Natalia Azoqa
12. Carl Boudreaux
13. Gabby Pascuzzi
14. Nick Wilson
15. Lyrsa Torres
16. Dan Rengering
17. Natalie Cole

Week 4:

1. Christian Hubicki
2. John Hennigan
3. Davie Rickenbacker
4. Kara Kay
5. Alec Merlino
6. Mike White
7. Nick Wilson
8. Elizabeth Olson
9. Alison Raybould
10. Angelina Keeley
11. Carl Boudreaux
12. Lyrsa Torres
13. Gabby Pascuzzi
14. Dan Rengering
15. Natalie Cole

Week 5:

1. Christian Hubicki
2. Kara Kay
3. Nick Wilson
4. Davie Rickenbacker
5. John Hennigan
6. Mike White
7. Angelina Keeley
8. Alec Merlino
9. Elizabeth Olson
10. Carl Boudreaux
11. Alison Raybould
12. Lyrsa Torres
13. Dan Rengering
14. Gabby Pascuzzi

Week 6:

1. Christian Hubicki
2. Nick Wilson
3. Mike White
4. Kara Kay
5. John Hennigan
6. Davie Rickenbacker
7. Angelina Keeley
8. Elizabeth Olson
9. Alec Merlino
10. Alison Raybould
11. Carl Boudreaux
12. Dan Rengering
13. Gabby Pascuzzi

Week 7:

1. Christian Hubicki
2. Nick Wilson
3. Mike White
4. Kara Kay
5. Alec Merlino
6. John Hennigan
7. Davie Rickenbacker
8. Alison Raybould
9. Angelina Keeley
10. Carl Boudreaux
11. Gabby Pascuzzi
12. Dan Rengering

Week 8:

1. Christian Hubicki
2. Nick Wilson
3. Mike White
4. Alec Merlino
5. Davie Rickenbacker
6. Kara Kay
7. Angelina Keeley
8. Alison Raybould
9. Carl Boudreaux
10. Gabby Pascuzzi
11. Dan Rengering

Week 9:

1. Christian Hubicki
2. Nick Wilson
3. Mike White
4. Alec Merlino
5. Kara Kay
6. Davie Rickenbacker
7. Alison Raybould
8. Angelina Keeley
9. Carl Boudreaux
10. Gabby Pascuzzi

Quick Thoughts:

I’m a bit surprised to see Davie behind Mike, Alec and Kara, but it’s likely their pre-merge was stronger than his. I have a hard time seeing a Goliath win at this point. I think the winner has to be Christian, Nick or Davie.

Nick has made a huge swing in rankings this season, starting at the back through the first few weeks. As a personal ranking, I think he’s more likely to win than Christian just given Christian’s threat level at the moment. I don’t see the David’s or Goliath’s letting him get to the end.

Although Christian has held the top spot in the rankings since episode 2 and now Nick appears to have stabilized at number 2, there has been a lot more movement week to week this season than in Ghost Island. That’s perhaps why so many people are high on this season, it’s unpredictable.

This is also echoed by the win probabilities. There’s a lot more variance amongst the top 5 than we saw in Ghost Island. At this point in Ghost Island, Michael, Laurel, Dom and Wendell were almost all identical in terms of win probability. This season, Christian and Nick are definitely the front runners, but theres some separation between the two and there’s a steep drop off from second to third.

Who’s playing like who?

Here is a deeper look at the top 5 in comparison to past winners. I am calculating, based on their in-game recorded behaviors, which prior winner they are playing like. I did this by taking each player from season 37 and calculating the dot product between their behavioral vector and all the winners. The combination with the highest dot product is the winner they are most similar to.

The results are below:

1. Christian Hubicki most similar to John Cochran
2. Nick Wilson most similar to Rob Mariano
3. Mike White most similar to Rob Mariano
4. Alec Merlino most similar to Rob Mariano
5. Kara Kay most similar to Amber Brkich

There’s a surprisingly large amount of Boston Rob here. Nick, Mike and Alec are all strategic and manipulative players, so perhaps that’s where the comparison is coming from.

Week 10:

1. Christian Hubicki
2. Nick Wilson
3. Kara Kay
4. Mike White
5. Davie Rickenbacker
6. Alison Raybould
7. Angelina Keeley
8. Gabby Pascuzzi

Quick Thoughts:

With Alec out of the mix, Kara moves up into third overall. In terms of probabilities, Nick and Christian are now quite close. Quiet week for Nick, but that may be a good thing. Christian still feels way too out front and he helped remove two giant targets this week, I just don’t see his path to the end game.

Even with 8 players left, I could still see just about any of them winning. I wouldn’t be surprised if any of them ended up winning besides perhaps Angelina. She feels like the only person drawing dead at the moment.

Week 11:

1. Christian Hubicki
2. Nick Wilson
3. Davie Rickenbacker
4. Kara Kay
5. Mike White
6. Alison Raybould
7. Angelina Keeley
8. Gabby Pascuzzi

Week 12:

1. Nick Wilson
2. Davie Rickenbacker
3. Kara Kay
4. Mike White
5. Alison Raybould
6. Angelina Keeley

Quick Thoughts:

Heading into the final week, Nick and Davie, the two remaining Davids are out in front. However, that also makes them big targets. Without Davie or Nick picking up another idol or winning immunities, I can definitely see a Goliath final three.

Kara is positioned well for a win and despite Alison being talked about as a threat, our model has her in 5th position. My money is on Kara, what do you think?