Rounding errors – those hundredths of a point add up

[Joesitz (RIP)]

I think we all knew in our hearts that comparisons will take place in the CoP: before, during and after a skater has finished his/her LP. That Skating Skills compent score is a deusy for extra quiet points either by comparison or by design. Who checks it out? Certainly not fans who see underrotations and wrong edge takeoffs from the TV.

 

[Hsuhs]

Frankly, i do not see how it could be otherwise, under any judging system. If you ask a judge why he or she gave a higher score to skater A than to skater B, that judge can say, in all honesty and candor, "I liked skater A's performance better." He could even explain why, in quite satisfactory detail.

But if, out of the blue, that same judge watches a single performance in isolation, I don't think he would be able to give a convincing reason why, no, that performance is not worth a 7.75, but then again, yes, it is better than a 7.25.

I honestly believed the judges were supposed to treat each performance as a single trial, and to compare it to some golden standard (unreachable, obviously, since nobody - ever - gets all +3 GOEs in TES and all 10s in PCS), and base their scores on that.

 

[Joesitz (RIP)]

I honestly believed the judges were supposed to treat each performance as a single trial, and to compare it to some golden standard (unreachable, obviously, since nobody - ever - gets all +3 GOEs in TES and all 10s in PCS), and base their scores on that.

Your operative words above are were supposed.

 

[Joesitz (RIP)]

.

The spread among the judges is so large, my view is that there are no significant decimal places in the final total, so results should be rounded to the nearest whole point. If you did that, though, many skaters would end up tied in events, so the ISU quotes results with unjustified precision, which makes many of the results statistically meaningless.

This is a fundamental problem with the mathematics of IJS that has been present from the begining and remains to be solved.

That's an eye opener. Wow.