Let the Deal Making Begin: New Judging Procedure

[dancemaster]

http://www.iceskatingintnl.com/current/content/let the deal making begin.htm

Meeting in Trento, Italy on October 3, 2008 the ISU Council voted to reduce the number of judges used at ISU championships and at the Grand Prix final. The number of judges on a panel will now be a minimum of eight and a maximum of nine, compared to the former minimum of ten and maximum of twelve. Under this rule, nine judges will be selected for the championships this season, with two randomly selected discard judges. That leaves seven scoring judges for calculating the single trimmed means, with five marks being included in the average of each GoE and Program Component...

 

[Mathman]

To see how it is going to work out in practice, here is the judges' draw for the major championships for the 2008-09 season.

http://isu.sportcentric.net/db//files/serve.php?id=1105

For instance, for the ladies' event at 2009 Wolrds, the 9 short program judges will be from Belarus, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Slovenia, and South Africa.

For the long program, four of these will be taken off at random and replace by Slovakia, Russia, Lithuania and China.

 

[chuckm]

To see how it is going to work out in practice, here is the judges' draw for the major championships for the 2008-09 season.

http://isu.sportcentric.net/db//files/serve.php?id=1105

For instance, for the ladies' event at 2009 Wolrds, the 9 short program judges will be from Belarus, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Slovenia, and South Africa.

For the long program, four of these will be taken off at random and replace by Slovakia, Russia, Lithuania and China.

No JPN, KOR, CAN, SUI, USA (top ladies skaters' federations). The only panel the USA is on is Pairs, where there is not much chance of a medal anyway. And Worlds is in the US this year. Wouldn't you know.

Wait til the Olympics. Then we will have a panel like BLR, UZB, ARM, AZE, RUS, UKR, LAT, EST, GEO and we can know in advance what the results will be.

 

[waxel]

Another example of how out-of-touch the ISU is... at a time when interest (and generated income) in figure skating is at an all-time low they do something else to undermine the credibility of the system.

We should be used to it by now.

 

[museksk8r]

No JPN, KOR, CAN, SUI, USA (top ladies skaters' federations).

I think to be fair the top federations in each discipline should not be represented at any competition. There should be no bias for any of the favorites across all national lines, IMO. Yes, please bring on the Estonia and South African judges. :yes:

 

[Sylvia]

Beverley Smith article in the Toronto Globe and Mail (Oct. 9): Judging panels to shrink

A new International Skating Union rule to reduce the number of judges at major figure skating championship events – including the Vancouver Olympics – could affect results and even encourage judging manipulation, some critics say.

At a quiet meeting in Trento, Italy, last Friday, the ISU's governing council made a new rule to drop the number of judges on a panel to nine from 12, as it responded to a money crunch. The ISU sent a circular letter out to member federations last Saturday.
...
The ISU already put the new rule to work earlier this week in Zurich, Switzerland, where it conducted a draw for the judges' panels for all of the major events.

Yesterday, ISU president Ottavio Cinquanta said in a telephone interview that the international body was forced to make the cuts because of difficult economic times and declining revenues from sponsorships and television deals.

“It is recommended to be wise and to save the money when possible,” he said. “Why have 12 people in attendance and to pay board and lodging and travel costs for 12 when we can do the same job with nine?'' These costs are paid by event organizing committees, although the ISU does offer financial support to stage events.

 

[dancemaster]

Wait til the Olympics. Then we will have a panel like BLR, UZB, ARM, AZE, RUS, UKR, LAT, EST, GEO and we can know in advance what the results will be.

I would say that 3/4 of those country may go with USA not Russia
now figure out why
USA is probably a bigger player on wheeling and dealing in today ice skating arena

 

[champs]

I keep forgetting... is the random selection of which judges' scores to be dropped applied separately for each skater's performance in a given competition event, or the random selection is done once and for all for the whole event (e.g. the same selection for all skaters in ladies SP event). Personally, either way I don't understand what good such a random score dropping can bring to the fairness of the score calculation, but I just want to have my confusion cleared up.

 

[MissIzzy]

I would say that 3/4 of those country may go with USA not Russia
now figure out why
USA is probably a bigger player on wheeling and dealing in today ice skating arena

Georgia might. It seriously might.
Estonia probably won't be trusted either in a few years; the way they're going, sooner or later they're going to have their own top team, the Russians will probably be foolish enough to have them lowballed...
Though I thought the judges' draw was random anyway.

 

[SeaniBu]

Everybody is getting budget cuts!:no:

Next thing is the Hockey refs will start doubling up as the judges.

 

[visaliakid]

Tough times and bad decisions for Figure Skating

Once again we see stupidity and folly rear it's ugly head from those contolling power within the International Skating Union. Instead of insightful and creative decision making to address shrinking revenues, we learn of more disasterous moves from Ottavio Cinquanta and the elected governing council.

I reference their latest move contained within ISU Communication No. 1534 - Judges Draw by number for ISU Figure Skating Championships 2009

Quote: The ISU Council at its meeting held in Trento, Italy on October 3, 2008 took the following decision on the number of Judges used in the ISU Championships based on the powers granted to the Council in the Constitution in Article 17, paragraph 1, q) (i): (which reads: modification of any Rule in the General Regulations, Special Regulations and in all Technical Rules)

Rule 582, paragraph 5,c), Rule 660, 5,c) and Rule 972 paragraph 4, b) of the ISU Special Rules for Single & Pair Skating and Ice Dance, and the Special Rules for Synchronized Skating 2008, are changed as follows:

"Each panel of Judges will consist of a maximum of nine (9) Judges but not less than 8 Judges. The above maximum number of Judges will also be applied to the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating Final (Senior and Junior)."

The above change is compared to the former minimum of ten and maximum of twelve Judges. Under this rule change, nine judges will be selected for the championships this season, with two randomly selected discard judges. That leaves seven scoring judges for calculating the single trimmed means, with five marks being included in the average of each GoE and Program Component.

Quoting George S. Rossano in his editorial 'Let the Deal Making Begin' at Ice Skating International: Online

"Now, to save money in the face of declining revenue, the ISU is reducing the number of officials by three at each of four championships this season. That corresponds to 12 man-weeks of travel expenses in the budget for each competition. At a generous estimated cost of $3,000 per man week, it would appear the ISU will save about $36,000 per competition, or less.

Even in these difficult times, however, $36,000 is a drop in the bucket. The ISU could probably save that amount of money by holding a few less parties at the championships, or using less expensive hotels, or leaving home unnecessary VIPs who do not contribute to the actual holding of the competitions, or flying coach, or saving paper by not publishing an endless stream of communications, or any number of other places that do not affect the integrity of the results. But no. Instead the ISU has chosen to deal with the cost of competitions by adding melamine to watered down milk. And the skaters will pay the price."

He goes on to add that this decision will negatively impact scoring in two ways, 1.) The skewing of marks - in that the importance of one bad mark will be increased by 40 percent since a bad mark will now be one of five instead of one of seven; and 2.) block judging - considering that with smaller panels, fewer countries will have judges on the panels, leading to panels where one block is not just a slim majority of the panel, but the vast majority of the panel. Rossano delves into further detail on the increased potential for block judging under this new rule in his editorial.

I find I am fully in agreement with Mr. Rossano's opinion. A business does not make a cost cutting decision that destroys the integrity of it's product. This is exactly what Ottavio Cinquanta and his small band of council members have perpetrated on the sport of figure skating.

When will the leadership of U.S. Figure Skating, Russian Skating Federation, Japan Skating Federation, and their peers throughout the international skating community wake up, and aquire the cajones to bring much needed common sense to the direction of their sport. It certainly is LONG OVERDUE!

 

[gsrossano]

I keep forgetting... is the random selection of which judges' scores to be dropped applied separately for each skater's performance in a given competition event, or the random selection is done once and for all for the whole event (e.g. the same selection for all skaters in ladies SP event). Personally, either way I don't understand what good such a random score dropping can bring to the fairness of the score calculation, but I just want to have my confusion cleared up.

In a given event segment, the same discard judges are used for all skaters. It is as if those judges never turned in their marks. So if judge 3 and judge 8 are the discard judges, none of their marks are used for all skaters in the event segment.

 

[Mathman]

To me, there is an easy and sensible solution. Just eliminate the random draw, seat nine judges and count all scores (before trimming).

Statistically this would at least not be worse than what they did before (seat 12, discard 3, leaving 9 before trimming). It would save money, if that is really the goal (why pay for extra judges to sit there like idiots pretending to be judging something?). And it would carry the extra bonus of getting rid of the ever-suspicious secrecy.

The only good thing about the new plan is that, with five scores to be averaged instead of seven, the problem about rounding to the nearest hundredth will go away.

 

[gsrossano]

The only good thing about the new plan is that, with five scores to be averaged instead of seven, the problem about rounding to the nearest hundredth will go away.

Mostly true, but not entirely true for events where the program component weight has a second decimal place.

 

[champs]

In a given event segment, the same discard judges are used for all skaters. It is as if those judges never turned in their marks. So if judge 3 and judge 8 are the discard judges, none of their marks are used for all skaters in the event segment.

Thanks Mr. Rossano, for the clarification. So now my opinion is exactly the same as what Mathman wrote above. Since the randome selection is applied uniformly, it only adds opacity/secrecy and also more cost for extra judges' travel expense.

 

[champs]

Mostly true, but not entirely true for events where the program component weight has a second decimal place.

But isn't each of 5 PCS component marks given as integer multiples of 0.25?
So whatever total sum is, that's also a whole multiple of 0.25, and that divided by 5 gives another whole multiple of 0.05, so up to summing of 5 component marks there is no rounding-off error, and finally scaling it with the PCS weight factor (I don't know the value) at the end shouldn't reorder the (pre-rounding-off) standings even if this scaling could of course involve 3-decimal-place value getting rounded off to 2 decimal places. (So, it may create a tie after scaling and rounding, but not re-ordering, I suppose)
Maybe I'm totally off, sorry it's way past midnight here...

 

[Blades of Passion]

A rather pointless change.

They should be focusing their efforts on fixing CoP, as it is still a work in progress that needs many fixes.

 

[gsrossano]

But isn't each of 5 PCS component marks given as integer multiples of 0.25?.

Yes, but it the average PC is, say, 5.25 and then you multiply by a factor of 0.75 you end up with 3.9375, which gets rounded again. The PCs are rounded twice. Once in the STM and again after multiplying by the factor. (Both of which are mathematically incorrect, but a fact of life.)

 

[Mathman]

^ Aren't the multipliers 1.0 and 2.0 for men and .8 and 1.6 for ladies?

 

[gsrossano]

^ Aren't the multipliers 1.0 and 2.0 for men and .8 and 1.6 for ladies?

But it is 0.75, and other values, for other disciplines and other divisions. Gotta keep the whole scope of things in mind.