Figure Skaters Online's fan based interview with Phil Hersh | Page 2 | Golden Skate

Figure Skaters Online's fan based interview with Phil Hersh

Joined
Jun 21, 2003
...the argument basically boils down to "math hard" - "oooh, skater X got 65.43, how will I ever know what that means :eek:?"

Yes, I think that is exactly the argument.

I think the argument is that there are two steps to audience satisfaction. Let's say you go to a hockey game and one team wins 4 to 3.

Step 1. Do you know what those two numbers mean?

Yes. The 4 means the first team scored 4 goals and the 3 means the other team scored 3 goals.

Step 2. Do you know that 4 is bigger than 3?

Yes, thanks to the wonderful schools that I attended. :)

In ice skating, if one guy scores 213.98 and the other scores 219.16, I can still do step 2 (although I never did like decimals in school!) It is step 1 that's the problem and makes me want to say, forget it.
 

Buttercup

Record Breaker
Joined
Mar 25, 2008
Step 1. Do you know what those two numbers mean?

Yes. The 4 means the first team scored 4 goals and the 3 means the other team scored 3 goals.

Step 2. Do you know that 4 is bigger than 3?

Yes, thanks to the wonderful schools that I attended. :)
Well, I'm glad you went to a good school... my high school was closed down a few years after I graduated :biggrin:.

But I don't see how your argument shows that the old system was more informative. Because really, what does 5.5 mean, and what does 5.7 mean? Only that one was better than the other. There is no obvious inherent meaning to the numbers i nthe old system, except maybe 6.0 (and I'd argue that even that one wasn't necessarily "perfection"). It was only the placements that mattered. So really it's the same as CoP: you can do step two but not step one. Except now we have the opportunity to find out exactly how the score was calculated.

I like decimals. It was when they took away the numbers and replaced them with letters and then Greek letters that I ran into trouble.
 
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antmanb

Record Breaker
Joined
Feb 5, 2004
But I still don't get why some viewers cannot grasp that 71.29 is more than 69.34, just like 5.8 is more than 5.5. You don't need to look up how a skater arrived at a score to understand a higher score is good. After all, under 6.0 viewers never knew what exactly went into determining the standings, either. And we still see the placement for each skater along with the score, so it's obvious where they stand in relation to each other.

I'll allow that sometimes UR calls and the like make it harder to understand why a certain performance was scored as poorer than one might expect, but this is not the argument we're seeing from some journalists; the argument basically boils down to "math hard" - "oooh, skater X got 65.43, how will I ever know what that means :eek:?" . But the comparison of one skater's score to another's under the current system is such basic math that I can't understand how it can be viewed as confusing. Surely schools in the US aren't that bad ;).

I think the answer might be as simple as - under 6.0 the commentators would regularly remind you that the marks are simply "placeholders" for the skaters and it's the ordinals that count. Meaning that the 5.8s, 5.9 etc were pretty much meaningless it was the placement that mattered and it was easy to see that oh 5 judges thought that was first place but 2 thought it was 2nd and 2 thought it was 3rd. You could debate that.

In addition to this, once the first few skaters have gone and you get a feel for where the judges started under 6.0 you more or less knew what to expect in terms of marks for a skater.

Nowadays it's not about how the judges differed in opinion (something we can all relate to) but rather everything is thrown into one big melting pot and a random number to two decimal places pops out. Sounds a bit like magic to me!

And of course people can see that 70.29 is higher 69.98, but the real question people are left asking is - what on earth did one person do that was 0.31 better than the other person? That 0.31 could easily have been greater in the other direction had different judges marks been taken into account etc.

Ant
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
But I don't see how your argument shows that the old system was more informative.

I do not think it was more informative. And in fact, whenever this argument comes up, I find that I am not really able to sustain my end of it by logical analysis (though Antman made some good points above.)

Still...

Under the old judging system, what a rush when that row of 5.8s and 5.9s flashed across the screen!

Now, I stare glumly at a 182.67 and say to myself, well, maybe I'll check out the protocols tomorrow.
 

antmanb

Record Breaker
Joined
Feb 5, 2004
I do not think it was more informative. And in fact, whenever this argument comes up, I find that I am not really able to sustain my end of it by logical analysis (though Antman made some good points above.)

Still...

Under the old judging system, what a rush when that row of 5.8s and 5.9s flashed across the screen!

Now, I stare glumly at a 182.67 and say to myself, well, maybe I'll check out the protocols tomorrow.

I think that's the crux of it - the real debate on the skate cannot start until we have sight of the protocols. At least when the marks were more or less meaningless and placement was the key, we could argue placement staright away. Nowadays the protocols rule and by tomorrow - who really cares, the competition was last night and it didn't make sense at the time.

Ant
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
Changing gears.... :laugh:

David (Pennsylvania, USA): Do you expect Meryl Davis and Charlie White to surpass Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto now that they have Igor Shpilband's complete attention?

Phil: Don't know, don't care.

OK, it is tricky to try to deduce someone's "tone" when just seeing his bare word in print. But...

It seems like in the Internet era, rudeness passes for "honesty," and, indeed, draws praise. Did anyone else read this dismissive answer as meaning,

"I don't know, I don't care, and only an idiot would give a hoot about ice dancing in the first place, or would ask such a stupid question if they did."

He could have said, "I don't really follow ice dancng much, so i don't have an opinion about that question."

I guess that wouldn't be "edgy" enough. :eek:hwell:
 

moojja

Rinkside
Joined
Feb 9, 2007
Changing gears.... :laugh:
OK, it is tricky to try to deduce someone's "tone" when just seeing his bare word in print. But...

It seems like in the Internet era, rudeness passes for "honesty," and, indeed, draws praise. Did anyone else read this dismissive answer as meaning,

"I don't know, I don't care, and only an idiot would give a hoot about ice dancing in the first place, or would ask such a stupid question if they did."

He could have said, "I don't really follow ice dancng much, so i don't have an opinion about that question."

I guess that wouldn't be "edgy" enough. :eek:hwell:

But in the beginning of the in the interview, he said he found ice dancing to be too subjective to judge. Exact quote is: "But it's like judging Nureyev vs. Baryshnikov. Dancing is 98 percent art."

Of course he then gets a question on who he thinks is better, Nureyev vs. Baryshnikov?
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
But in the beginning of the in the interview, he said he found ice dancing to be too subjective to judge. Exact quote is: "But it's like judging Nureyev vs. Baryshnikov. Dancing is 98 percent art."

Of course he then gets a question on who he thinks is better, Nureyev vs. Baryshnikov?
I don't think this Q&A was a running dialogue. I think everyone submitted the questions, then the webmaster passed them along to Mr. Hersh all together.

It's not like David from Pennsylvania joined in johnnie-come-lately with an annoying question that had already been discussed.

They could have put all questions about ice dancing together, so it wouldn't seem like Hersh is throwing David's question back in his teeth.
 

FSOWebmaster

On the Ice
Joined
Jul 8, 2005
I don't think this Q&A was a running dialogue. I think everyone submitted the questions, then the webmaster passed them along to Mr. Hersh all together.

Yes, all of the questions were collected through Figure Skaters Online's Web site and passed on to Phil Hersh for him to answer via e-mail. It was not a running dialogue like it would have been if it was done over the phone. It was done this way in the interest of time since Phil answered these on top of what he does for his job.

But to be clear, none of the questions and answers were modified before posting them online. And about 10 questions were not asked of Phil because they were out of date by the time that Phil was able to answer the questions. (His predictions for winning the U.S. nationals, for example, would have been irrelevant when he answered in March.)

FSO does a number of interviews this way and currently, we're collecting questions for Brittney Rizo then Marissa Castelli/Simon Shnapir. Please feel free to submit a question for Rizo now at http://figureskatersonline.com/extras.html#interviews.
 
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Kinga

Medalist
Joined
Feb 15, 2008
Under the old judging system, what a rush when that row of 5.8s and 5.9s flashed across the screen!

Now, I stare glumly at a 182.67 and say to myself, well, maybe I'll check out the protocols tomorrow.

I think that's the crux of it - the real debate on the skate cannot start until we have sight of the protocols. At least when the marks were more or less meaningless and placement was the key, we could argue placement staright away. Nowadays the protocols rule and by tomorrow - who really cares, the competition was last night and it didn't make sense at the time.

Ant

I will jump back to this topic.
Actually, a lof of can be done to make the CoP results more exciting for fans. Displaying them in better way could help. Would increase drama, would increase comprehension of scoring.
It should be done both in the arena and on TV.
Just few suggestions:
First, the performed jumps should be listed and marked with UR or e followed by amount of points earned for each element. Also the levels of the other elements could be shown.
Each 'part' of the PC mark definitely should be shown. (and finally PCS should be applied correctly, but that is the subject for another thread).
Next, it should be shown what place a skater got from each judge (and then lets get rid of this ridiculous random judge pick and anonymous judging). It would be exciting to see that judges agreeded or disagreed and to what extent.
Finally, I would put the 'score to beat' in order to get first place in LP and score to beat in order to win the whole competition. Then the audience could anticipate: 'will she get this 120,5 to beat the skater X?'

This could help to keep the fans more satisfied. Honestly, I love figure skating and I know quite much about it, but even I dont bother myself to go and look at the protocols once the competition is over. It is not exciting. So we should not expect the casual fans to do this. They could get a 'mini protocol' on their TV screen. It would clarify right away all the URs and people would not wonder why skater X got low points in spite of a clean program. Also, can you imagine the sigh of disappointment or relieve in the audience once there is a slow motion reply of a questionable jump, and then either it decided not be downgraded :)thumbsup:) or downgraded (thumb down) Would be cool!
 

antmanb

Record Breaker
Joined
Feb 5, 2004
I will jump back to this topic.
Actually, a lof of can be done to make the CoP results more exciting for fans. Displaying them in better way could help. Would increase drama, would increase comprehension of scoring.
It should be done both in the arena and on TV.
Just few suggestions:
First, the performed jumps should be listed and marked with UR or e followed by amount of points earned for each element. Also the levels of the other elements could be shown.

I think ideas regarding the amount of information that should be displayed when a skater is given their marks has been debated before and I'm not sure a satisfactory conclusion was really reached. Too many numbers may phase viewers who don't have a great understanding of the system (unless there is some "dummies guide to the marks" at the start of a broadcast. Maybe just breaking down the TES between Jumps, Spins and footwork followed by the GOE for each.

Each 'part' of the PC mark definitely should be shown. (and finally PCS should be applied correctly, but that is the subject for another thread).

Agreed!

Next, it should be shown what place a skater got from each judge (and then lets get rid of this ridiculous random judge pick and anonymous judging). It would be exciting to see that judges agreeded or disagreed and to what extent.

But that is the point - the judges no longer give placements. The judging system is supposedly not comparative anymore it's absolute. They simply grade each element and then, in theory, mark each of the five PCS looking at what that skater did, not what the others did.

That IMO is what makes the judging difficult now. The minutiae of details means the responsibility for placements is taken out of the judges hands and put into the COP because the judges just mark each thing as it happens and computer tells you who won. Under 6.0 each judge was left with score sheet setting out exactly how the competition would have come out had they been marking on their own. You added 8 other judges to that and worked out how all their opinions were used to arrive at the final result. It wasn't perfect but it was a more acceptable ethos IMO than COP.

Finally, I would put the 'score to beat' in order to get first place in LP and score to beat in order to win the whole competition. Then the audience could anticipate: 'will she get this 120,5 to beat the skater X?'

That is very useful - often they show the overall scores of the sakters that are in the lead and thankfully the Eurosport commentators often do the maths for you and tell you what a skater needs to get in the lead or beat a certain skater.

Ant
 
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