Inaccurate Contest Scoring

KS don't need no steenking rules tweaks -- he's been doing fine for a coon's
age.

Bob Johnson

"Bill Feldbaumer" wrote in message
m...
On the second day of this year's 15 Meter Nationals, Karl Striedieck
chose the best direction for his flight and smoked the rest of the
field. He made 63.7 mph, 8 mph better than the second pilot and 14 mph
better than the third. Did he get 1000 points for this outstanding
performance? No, he received only 852 points. The reason was that some
other pilots chose less favorable directions for their flights and
landed out. That devalued the day and Karl's score. The more poorly
Karl's competitors did, the lower his score became. Karl should have
stood by the finish line and urged his competitors to come home so
that he could have received a better score!

In racing sports world wide, an individual's score is determined by
his performance alone. Soaring is the only racing sport that allows an
individual's score to be affected by the performances of his
competitors. It should not be this way. It can be changed.

It is possible to make a rational analysis of scoring systems rather
than just accepting "the way things have always been done." Any one
interesting in doing so could start with my posting on r.a.s.,
10/2/2003, "History of Contest Scoring."

Bill Feldbaumer 09

Bill,

the scoring system is goofy, and we keep trying to rejigger it, with
greater or lesser success. But one thing is a constant... the best
pilots keep winning. Why is that? When I figure it out, I'll be sure
not to tell anyone else.

besides KS has been head of the rules
committee for many years and has had ample opportunity to tweak the rules

There is logic in this rule, anyhow:

1 Soaring is dependent on the weather.
2 For a contest task (not the same as a leisure cross-country flight)
to be fair, it has to give more or less the same opportunities to all
contestants, so the weather should be "sufficiently" homogenous and
dependable, or else it's no longer a matter of skill but luck.
3 As it is next to impossible to assess the weather objectively in the
whole contest area, some kind of objective criterion is needed.
4 The best way the rule makers found until now was by taking into
account the effective results of the contestants, hence: the less they
perform, the less the day was predictable, the bigger the luck factor,
the less the day is valued.

I agree it doesn't seem fair at times, but on average, it's not that
bad a rule. Anyhow, it's a rule that was made for international
contests. There is nothing that prohibits the organizers of smaller
competitions to amend it. You can drop the day factor, drop the minimum
distance, drop the minimum number of contestants having to cover the
minimum distance, add a rule saying that if even only one contestant
flies the task, it will be valid regardless of other limitations... Of
course, you have to check with your national competition body if this
makes the competition acceptable for them to be recognized - but then
again, if it's a competition just for fun, it doesn't need to be
sanctioned.


--
stephanevdv
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted via OziPilots Online [ http://www.OziPilotsOnline.com.au ]
- A website for Australian Pilots regardless of when, why, or what they fly -

There is a logic behind devalued days - unappealing
as it seems on first inspection.

The intention is to keep the standard deviation in
scores (the 'spread' in points) relatively consistent
over the course of a contest. Devalued days essentially
reduce the landout penalty if lots of pilots land out.
Why? Because the belief is that if a few pilots do
really well and a lot do poorly, there was likely something
odd in the weather conditions for the day or the way
the task was called to increase the 'luck factor' for
that day. While this may not always be true, it tends
to correlate pretty well in my experience.

Without devalued days one pilot might end up with an
insurmoutable lead early in the contest - hundreds
of points, perhaps 1000 in the extreme scenarios mentioned
here. The all (s)he would have to do is leech on the
next best pilot(s) for the rest of the contest - not
much fun. And no way to pick a champion in my view.
At least with devalued days a less skilled pilot would
have to put together a string of exceptional performances,
rather than just one - lucky or not.

It's fine to argue about the merits of every day counting
the same - but in the real world there are enough unusual
circumstances that competition pilots on the whole
have elected to deal with it this way.

I know Bill has an alternative that has been used in
Canada, I think. It ensures that no two days count
the same, but deals with landouts in a different way
and has some other pluses and minuses, some of which
are safety related.

It was debated here several months ago.

9B

At 18:06 05 June 2004, Chris Ocallaghan wrote:
Bill,

the scoring system is goofy, and we keep trying to
rejigger it, with
greater or lesser success. But one thing is a constant...
the best
pilots keep winning. Why is that? When I figure it
out, I'll be sure
not to tell anyone else.

At 15:48 07 June 2004, Andy Blackburn wrote:
There is a logic behind devalued days - unappealing
as it seems on first inspection.

WRONG, wrong, wrong....there is no logic AT ALL behind
devalued days.

Yes, there can be luck and unusual weather conditions
that skew the results so that less skilled, luckier
pilots win one day.

The solution is to hold not one race, but several races
over several days......AND that is what each contest
does!!

Just like the World Series, or the Stanley Cup (Game
7 tonight!), a series of races will even out the luck
factor and let the skilled pilots go to the front due
to consistently out-flying the lucky pilots.

I would say if the better pilots can not win more races
in a week long contest than the 'lucky' pilots, the
perhaps the better pilots are really not that good
after all.

All this devaluing of days is just political correctness
that reduces competition victory so the loser does
not feel so bad.

At 16:24 07 June 2004, John Jones wrote:
At 15:48 07 June 2004, Andy Blackburn wrote:

WRONG, wrong, wrong....there is no logic AT ALL behind
devalued days.


I guess a monkey typed out that rule when no one was
looking.

;-)

Just because you don't agree with the logic doesn't
mean there isn't any logic at all.

By the way, different sports do treat individual competitions
differently. Many team sports (baseball, football,
basketball, hockey) generally count one game equal
to one point - the most games won decides the outcome
of a series. Other sports count cumulative score differential
(golf) and some (F1 racing)attribute non-equal points
to finish order (1st gets 10 pts, second gets 8 pts,
etc) - irrespective of how much you won by. So, winning
two games in the hockey playoffs by 10-0 scores is
not the same as winning the first two rounds of a golf
tournament by 10 strokes is not the same as winning
two F1 races by 10 laps - only in the second case does
cumulative score differential matter and only in the
second and third can you never win an individual round/race
and still win the tournament/series (though even here
there is a huge difference in how you would have to
do it). There are also round-robin and seeding based
tournaments, not to mention the college football BCS
system (yikes!).

I forget how they score bowling...

There are things about the day devaluation rules that
are strange and seemingly arbitrary, to be sure, but
lets not pretend that they aren't addressing a real
issue with how contests transpire -- and please let's
not pretend that other sports don't have similar peculiarities
that come out of they way they are played.

Take baseball's infield fly rule. Now THAT should generate
some heat!

9B

Gentlemen,

Thanks for your responses. A number of issues were raised. However,
many of you did not address the question that I asked. Should a
pilot's score be determined by his performance alone or should the
performances of his competitors be able to influence his score? If you
are still interested, please answer that question.

I don't know what my soaring experience has to do with your logical
evaluation of a scoring system. However, some of you asked. Over the
past forty-two years, I have flown sailplanes for over 3300 hours. I
have competed in ten nationals and numerous regionals. I have had
several articles on scoring systems for soaring published. You can
trace through them with the reference in my original posting, "History
of Contest Scoring."

Bill Feldbaumer 09

Bill Feldbaumer wrote:

Gentlemen,

Thanks for your responses. A number of issues were raised. However,
many of you did not address the question that I asked. Should a
pilot's score be determined by his performance alone or should the
performances of his competitors be able to influence his score? If you
are still interested, please answer that question.

I've flown under both kinds of systems, and I prefer the "determined by
his performance alone" for the rule simplicity, but I prefer the "the
performances of his competitors be able to influence his score" for the
greater fairness I think it supplies.


--
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

(Bill Feldbaumer) wrote in message om...
Gentlemen,

Thanks for your responses. A number of issues were raised. However,
many of you did not address the question that I asked. Should a
pilot's score be determined by his performance alone or should the
performances of his competitors be able to influence his score? If you
are still interested, please answer that question.

Bill,

Of course my competitors' performance should influence my score.
This is the whole point of racing !

Maybe you should rephrase that question.

My suggested questions:

Should every day count the same ?
Should strong days count more/less than weak days ?
How do we decide on strong/weak days ?

Todd Smith
3S