US Rules change needed for devaluation of contest day

On Friday, 22 August 2014 09:03:49 UTC-6, Sean Fidler wrote:
In sailing, most major events (and most small events for that matter) have as standard practice a "drop" race or "throw out" after a certain number of races are completed (usually 6). This is very standard in sailing. If you get in only 3 races (for example) in for the weekend, all races count because throwing one third of the available sores would greatly skew the results. But once you get a solid number of races, six, everyone throws the worst and only your best 5 count.



I love the idea of "throw-outs" (otherwise referred to as mulligans in sailing) in soaring but think the adjustment should only kick in after 3 solid contest days are completed (.25 * WDSD). Beginning to "tune scores" after only one or two flying days seems a bit early.



Sean

The rule reads as follows

11.4.4 â€* Worst Day Score Adjustment
If this is declared to be in effect, an adjustment is calculated and added to the cumulative score of each entrant.
11.4.4.1 â€* Worst Day Score Differential
For each entrant, WDSD is the greatest difference on any contest day between the entrant's score (before application of a Contest penalty) and the highest score achieved by any regular entrant in the class on that day.
11.4.4.2 â€* A Worst Day Score Adjustment is added to each entrant's cumulative score, as follows:
After one official day: WDSA = zero
After 2 official days: WDSA = 0.25 * WDSD
After 3 official days: WDSA = 0.5 * WDSD
After 4 official days: WDSA = 0.75 * WDSD
After 5 or more official days: WDSA = WDSD

With little to no use of this rule there is no experience or history to try to make assessments of the validity. Maybe after 3 days is better than 2.

Would like to see it actually used before having lengthy discussions.

Ironically, I used this rule in Ionia (R6N) all 3 years I ran it. I might have been the first to use it actually. So I have some relevant experience with the rule and with the reaction competitors have had to it. Oddly, nobody has asked me about the experience at the SSA.

We advertised the rule usage and promoted it to potential competitors. People seemed to respond positively to the idea (many though it was the ability to throw out a worst day score) although I think it had more to do with locals being able to miss a day for work rather than having a bad flying day and therefore have no chance of scoring well in the contest.

Personally, disagree with the concept of throw outs in sailing or soaring. Especially soaring as we often have so few flying days constituting a competition. I think ALL races should count 100% in a competition. The most consistent pilot is the champion. Not the most consistent pilot with a mulligan. I'm commenting on the rule favorably only in terms regarding the "science experiment" of attracting more "competitors" by making the sport more forgiving via rules (wide radius TAT tasks, worst day score adjustment, etc).

I like the idea of having more competitors but rules like this, compromises in task quality (TAT, MAT) also negatively impact the overall competition quality. We need to be careful that we do not "water the sport down" so much that the people who actually care about serious competition are left disenchanted.

Sean

"Oddly, nobody has asked me about the experience at the SSA. "

Actually the ssa rules committee (me) talked to you a lot and to other pilots, and discussed lessons learned at the meeting, reflected in the minutes

John cochrane

I suppose that is true.

I just looked at the four 2014 rulebooks on the SSA site; sports regional, FAI regional, sports nationals and FAI nationals.

ONLY the regional rulebooks has the WDSA provision. I did this by searching for WDSA.

The WDSA provision is available for regional events on a class by class by class basis, In WINSCORE when defining the class you choose the WDSA option.

i would like to see more events try this. If I CD a regional event in 2015 I will push for it.

Ron

Yes, most rules only become available for nationals after they've been tried at regionals. So this rule present in regional but not national rules is a feature not a bug
John Cochrane