To start off with, any time somebody uses a phrase such as "[is] unequivocally the fairest way of scoring an event using human judges" my screwball detectors go up. To use the words "unequivocally," "fairest," and "human" in a phrase to make the same point is to me like saying "Capitalism is unequivocally the fairest economic system for humans."
I know this next thing is nitpicky, but I couldn't help but chuckle at the term "human judges." I know Rossano meant judged events vs. timed events or those events where the result is determined (or "judged") by something like how many times you get a ball in a basket, but when he writes "human judges" I want to say, "As opposed to Vulcan judges? Monkey judges? Computer judges?" Sorry, just being human.
As for the proposed system, while I'm glad that at least the Australian federation is proposing an alternative to the pre-'01 ordinal based system as well as the COP, like Mathman I think some of it addresses political issues rather than scoring or statistical issues. Examples: Anonymity of judges and assigning judges from different geographical or geopolitical regions. As Mathman said, these changes can be implemented with any system and I agree they should be a separate discussion. However, anytime the problem of anonymous judging is brought up is another time Speedy sees that people don't like it, so on that account, I guess I don't care when or how people talk about it as long as they do.
What I find problematic about this system is that it attempts to do many of the same things as the COP, but IMO without the tools. For example, it breaks up the technical mark into three sub-marks: "In singles, jumps would account for one-half of the Technical Merit mark (0 to 3.0), spins would account for one-quarter (0 to 1.5), and sequences and connecting moves for one quarter (0 to 1.5)." Rossano goes into how this would work for pairs and dance as well.
"In this approach," says Rossano, "the contribution of each type of element to the skater's score is rigorously established. For singles, jumps would make up 25% of a skater's total score, compared to CoP where jumps make up about 42% of the total score. Spins under Australia's proposal would make up 12.5% of the total score compared to 8% under CoP. With the publication of these sub-marks all would know exactly the relative contribution of each type of element to the total score, and were each skater stands for each type of element."
Although the advantage to this system relative to the COP is that it's simpler, I think it's also the disadvantage. There are only three technical components to the the technical merit score--jumps, spins, and everything else. Since this is a short paper and I'm sure not intended to go into all the detail of the ISU's 25-page COP communique, I'm not sure about some things. For example with jumps, Rossano says they would be scored from 0 to 3.0, which, BTW, doesn't square with his assertion that the scoring will go to two decimal points, ie, 3.00. Anyway, does the 0.00 to 3.00 score mean each judge's impression of how the skater did all his/her jumps? Or is each jump scored the way it is in the COP except without a base value, eg, .25 for a clean 3Lutz, .20 for a clean 3flip, etc.?
What does the skater see on his numerical scores? For example, let's say that for jumps a skater scored 2.25, for spins 1.40, and for everything else 1.45, for a total score of 5.10. What specific information does that give the skater other than his jumps were scored at 75% of the maximum, that his spins were scored at about 93% of the maximum, and that everything else was scored at about 97%? Okay, so jumps in the technical score is what needs work. If the skater fell, that could account for it, but what if the skater didn't fall? Did the skater two-foot, take off or land on the wrong edge, pitch forward, touch down with a hand or the free leg, whatever? Rather than go into all the "maybes" I'll just say that one of the things I like about the COP is that everything a skater does is covered specifically. True, there are bugs in the system of having the caller "see" if a jump was significantly underrotated, flutzed or whatever, but I think this problem can be addressed. Anyway, with the COP, a skater can see that by adding footwork going into a clean jump, he gets anywhere from +1 to +3 points, or that because of two-foot landings, he has points deducted.
OTOH, A skater may find that by adding footwork before a jump, his speed is compromised, resulting in two-foot landings on that jump. So the skater and the coach can decide: Right now, is it worth keeping in the extra footwork given the risk of having a two-foot landing? I would hope an intelligent skater and coach would first of all say, "We've got to work on your/my jump technique and certain strength issues to do this jump clean with the added footwork." Secondarily, they would have to decide for the next competition what to do, but they would have the specific information to make the choice. I think it gets even fuzzier with spins, spirals, footwork, and other areas. We saw how Sasha, Shizuka, and Fumie all upgraded their spiral sequences by seeing they were only getting a Level 2 in the COP and finding out what they could do to upgrade it to a Level 3. The skaters get more points and we get better skating, providing the skaters do the changes well. I don't see provissions in Rossano's system for skaters and coaches being able to make such changes with either the technical or presentation score.
Also, what about the differences in number of jumps between the SP and the LP? There are at least twice as many triple jumps in the LP as the SP, so to assign a jump sub-score of 0.00-3.00 for both seems problematic.
Rossano says his proposal his superior because under the COP about 42% of the total score is based on jumps whereas in his system it's 25% of the total score. I'm all for doing things to make the "other stuff" in figure skating important, but IMO jumping is what separates meat from the potatoes. I didn't know that jumping accounted for about 42% of the total score in the COP but I was quite pleased to read it (assuming it's correct). I think about 40% for jumping is just fine. IMO, 25% is far too low. For as difficult as jumping is and for as few people in the world who can do it well and consistently, I want skaters who jump well to get credit for it. I don't want "jumping beans" but neither do I want 75% of a skater's score to be based on everything else. Figure skating is a lot more than jumping, but jumping (triples, quads, combos) requires the greatest amount of skill and the greatest risk in the shortest amount of time. That's why I think 25% is much too low and that somewhere around 40% is about right. OT: Under the COP, I wonder if the percentage of the total score for jumping is greater for men than ladies.
Rossano spends a lot of his time talking about relative vs. absolute scoring, that is placement (how one skater did relative to another) vs. judging "in the moment." But if the results of the competition are to be based on the double trimmed mean of the scores of 11 judges, how does relative placement get in there? (BTW, "average" and "mean" are the same.) In other words, under Rossano's system, as I understand it, each skater's technical and presention scores would be added (I don't know if they would be added together or separately in order to get the mean); the two high and two low scores would be thrown out (I guess he means for the technical and presentation scores each, which would be the two high and two low technical scores and the two high and two low presentation scores, which would actually be eight scores, though I'm not sure on that since it would depend on whether he combines the scores first and I don't think he said); the remaining scores would be divided by the number of remaining judges (11 - 4 = 9); and that would give us our mean (again, don't know if he's keeping the technical and presentation scores together or separate). The skater with the highest mean score would win the gold, second highest would win the silver, and so on.
So where does relative placement happen? Did I miss it or did Rossano not specify?
There are advantages to Rossano's proposal over the COP--easier to implement, can compare past results, fans are used to the 6.0 system, and other things he mentioned in his paper. But I think these are relatively minor advantages compared to the weaknesses of the system and the advantages of the COP.
OT: Doggygirl asked if we had heard anything about how the COP worked from the ISU. I don't think we'll hear anything about it until well after the entire season is over, the ISU has it's big COP meeting, and possibly not even until early next fall.
So, interesting points in Rossano's proposal but my vote still goes to the COP with changes.
Rgirl
