Figure skating judging and the Cold War

I found an interesting analysis published in Perspectives in Politics, a journal of the American Political Science Association, Cambridge University Press (2007, volume 5, pages 17-29.)

The title is “The Cold War on Ice: Constructivism and the Politics of Olympic Figure Skating Judging.”

Here is a link to the abstract. To see the full article you have to subscribe to the journal. Every college that has a political science department subscribes, so you can access it from computers on campus for free.

http://journals.cambridge.org/actio...C5572694FB.tomcat1?fromPage=online&aid=715376

“Constructivism” is a school of thought in the social sciences. The authors of the article apply techniques championed by this approach to investigate the degree to which bias in figure skating judging followed Warsaw Pact/NATO lines during the cold war.

Do judges tend to give higher-than-average scores to skaters from their own countries? (Duh.) To skaters from their own political/military blocs? Do they give lower-than-average scores to skaters from countries that they perceive as “rivals” or “enemies?”

Here are a couple of statistics from the study. (Without going into statistical detail, a high positive number indicates positive bias, a high negative number negative bias., and 0 means no bias, compared to the judging panel as a whole.

…During the cold war (1948-1992)…After the cold war (1994-2002)

U.S judge/U.S. skater..… ... +.42 ………+.43

USSR judge/USSR skater…+.86 ……....+.57


U.S judge/USSR skater…... -.17 ............. -.27 for Russian skaters,
………………………………………….......+.11 for former SSR skaters

USSR judge/US skater…… –.22…….…. -.35


NATO judge/USSR skater… -.19………..-19

Warsaw judge/US skater….. -.21………-.16

A couple of "first glance" impressions.
- I somehow find it reassuring that positive bias is stronger than the negative
- Would be interesting to see post-CW USSR broken down further. At the very least, you have Ukraine/ Belorussia that can be counted with Russia; you have the Baltics with their own unique policies, and you have the other nine as anywhere between the extremes.

The authors make the point also that many of the skaters, coaches and judges who now represent other former Soviet bloc countries are in fact Russians, so that muddies the waters.

Kunstrijdster said:

Rating Skating by Gilbert W. Bassett, Jr. and Joseph Persky
Source: Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 89, No. 427 (Sep., 1994), pp. 1075- 1079

This is about 6.0 juding and shows that median ranks and the majority rule are superior in controlling measurement error compared to a trimmed mean or (guess what ) total marks thus providing statistically a strong protection against manipulation by a minority of judges.

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The worst of all possible worlds would be using the technical merit and presentation marks with tiebreakers and then just adding them up.

Judges could intentionally or unintentionally skew results in IJS by using larger gaps and/or systematically giving higher marks to their favored skaters and lower ones to the perceived closest rivals, but they can't control or even keep track of how the base marks determined by the technical panel affect the overall scores.

A Radiant Smile from the Lovely Lady": Overdetermined Femininity in "Ladies" Skating by Abigail M. Feder
Source: TDR (198, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Spring, 1994), pp. 62-78 The MIT Press

The title says it all, actually.

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This is an important article. But it has nothing to do with statistics or really with judging.

Kunstrijdster said:

Rating Skating by Gilbert W. Bassett, Jr. and Joseph Persky
Source: Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 89, No. 427 (Sep., 1994), pp. 1075- 1079

A Radiant Smile from the Lovely Lady": Overdetermined Femininity in "Ladies" Skating by Abigail M. Feder
Source: TDR (198, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Spring, 1994), pp. 62-78 The MIT Press

Nonparametric Tests of the Unbiasedness of Olympic Figure-Skating Judgments
by Bryan Campbell and John W. Galbraith
The Statistician, Vol. 45, No. 4 (1996), pp. 521-526

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Thanks for the bibliography! Now were getting somewhere!!

Actually, the article that I quoted was not really about figure skating judging so much as about constructivist theory in political science. (This theory is also big in schools of education -- the constructivist theory of learning.)

The point of the article is that by applying constructivist principles in an area of international competition which does not involve national security issues, one can make predictions about what kinds of bias we should expect to see. Then we can look at the actual results. If it turned out according to the prediction, that is a feather in the cap of th constructivists.

For instance, taken as a whole the Warsaw/NATO biases were small to non-existent.

Guilty as charged, I put it inbetween the other two just in case someone might want a break from all the statistics.

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My favorite skating book is Culture on Ice by Ellen Kestnbaum. Sort of a post-post-feminist look at these issues.

And my all-time favorite claim along these lines is that school figures are "masculine" because they represent man's triumph over nature, carving his initials into the virgin ice. While free skating is "feminine" because it is currying favor with the powerful audience by showing off your body. (Kestnbaum largely ridicules these notions, but still...)

Thanks so much for the links MATHMAN. As always, I must say that you are very resouceful. Sounds like a good idea/suggestion regarding the Must Reads from KUNSTRIJDSTER.

Mathman said:

The authors make the point also that many of the skaters, coaches and judges who now represent other former Soviet bloc countries are in fact Russians, so that muddies the waters.

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True, but there is still a great difference among the 15 states. Baltics, for instance, could just be counted with the Warsaw Pact countries instead.

Thanks a lot, Mathman!

I've always suspected such a judging bias or favoritism, but also thought I was brainwashed by tons of consipiracy theories.

Very intriguing!

Mathman, I suspect there's something to the idea that school figures being due to the same tendency that causes Kilroy to carve his name on his school desk, not to mention the monuments of Egypt.

The ultimate version of this sort of autographing would be this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ios9R9S20c

It's always been a totalitarian regime that needs to be the best. Hitler as well as Stalin. Since the East European Communist States looked to Moscow for existence, and they all had figure skating as part of the European culture, it was easy and legal to back up the judging system with pro-Russian judges. Since Europeans are fully represented on the judging Panels, it is understandable that at least 4, if not more, eastern european judges would be on any given panel of their choice. China would also go as the eastern countries. A check of any results would show that they would have the same placements, whether First Place or otherwise.
Cleverly, they always allowed for a favorite Western skater to place second, and that is how you get Torvahl and Dean in that Oly where a Russian Team did that very specious jitterbug and won gold.

The will to win was very strong for the Nazis and Communists. I'm not surprised at those books mentioned above.