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The skeptics also underestimate how easy it is, in a very tight year like this one, for there to be a split. Assume, as most do, that the Best Picture race is very competitive this year and that there are 11 voters. Assume for simplicity’s sake that six like 12 Years a Slave more, but five prefer Gravity. All it takes is for one single voter to split his or her ballot to create the split, because the year is so tight. The example is, of course, over simplified, but aptly illustrates that even if we buy the argument that people are unlikely to split their ballots (which I do not) it only takes a handful of people to do so if the races are otherwise tight, to cause an ultimate split.

More importantly, stats are, in the end, just numbers. The Academy has broken “rules” in the past years left and right. Argo won despite not having a Best Director nomination, a feat achieved only by a single movie since the 1940s (Driving Miss Daisy). The rule that the winner of the PGA award wins Best Picture, unbroken since 2006, will be broken this year. The PGA awarded its prize to two movies, but both of them cannot win at the Oscars because the Academy has instructed its accountants to not permit a Best Picture tie by looking at who has the most #1 votes in the preferential ballot. I love stats, I truly do. But, in the end, voting for the Oscars is done by humans, not machines. They like what they like, and they vote for what they like.

In the end, the predictive value of stats and past wins depends on making crazy assumptions about people’s voting behaviors. It requires us to believe that your average Academy voter will say, for example: “Well, Gravity won the DGA, so I’m going to vote for it for Best Picture, because DGA winners are supposed to win Best Picture.” We know that the Academy voter last year did not pick up his or her ballot and think: “Well, Argo was not nominated for Best Director by the Director’s branch of the Academy, so I won’t vote for it for Best Picture.”

One thing that I have learned over many years of obsessive Oscar watching is that past wins and past Oscar ceremonies are helpful to tell us about Hollywood’s (and the country’s) taste in movies, but are less useful as strict regression-type predictive models. Thus, the fact that Gravity and 12 Years of Slave have been winning a lot of awards undoubtedly tells us one thing - people across the industry like those two movies, and so do audiences. But the fact that either has won this or that particular guild or prize is, in my opinion, of highly limited predictive value beyond that. They like what they like, and they vote for what they like.

And if one insists on pointing to precedent for a split along the lines of what I’m expecting to happen on March 2nd, then a very memorable year in Oscar history illustrates the point. In 1972, the Academy famously awarded Best Director to Cabaret, but Best Picture went to The Godfather. Not only that, but Cabaret took home eight Oscars - including two acting prizes - and failed to win Best Picture, a record that stands today. So 1972 is thus illustrative of just how Gravity could win several Oscars, including Directing, and still not win Best Picture. Cabaret, like Gravity, was well respected, indeed beloved by some, and a technical achievement on all fronts. But The Godfather had the “gravitas” of the being even more serious, more important. Similarly, 12 Years a Slave deals with a more serious topic (arguably) than the more subtle, nuanced Gravity. I believe they don’t like subtlety. The like it clear and in your face.

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