So thinking more about these charts:
I tend to be someone who looks at protocols after every competition. Sometimes it's because I think someone was over or undermarked, or to separate out the elements of a huge or very low score. But useful as they are, the data can be overwhelming if you're trying to compare skaters.
As I said above, the reason I like these charts is because they give a big picture / judges' relative rankings of skaters on groups of elements, and because they really do make it easier to look at PCS.
One of the things we often complain about with PCS is that judges tend to use SS as a proxy for all the other components. And while that may be true for an individual judge, looking at these composite scores, ranked, shows that as a group, the judges do seem to see the same things we see.
For example, in the SP, Boyang's components ranked 5, 4,2,2,4 and in the FS they ranked 4,3,3,2,3. So even though we may think the actual raw numbers should be higher or lower, we can see that on average, the judges do recognize that he's more than just a jumping bean.
Similarly, we can see that in the FS the judges recognize that Sergei (ranked 3, 7, 2, 5, 2) has good skating and performance skills relative to the field, but he ranks much lower in transitions and choreography. Which really is about how I personally would sum him up: nice edges and flow, obviously into performing, but relatively empty program without much real choreo or many transitions.
With Max (6, 4, 5, 2, 6 in FS ) we kind of see the opposite. He's ranked average (not at the bottom) in skating skills, performance, and interpretation, but the judges do like the program and recognize that he has transitions.
Another thing that's easy to see with the BV groupings is when guys are losing levels on spins and in the step sequences. You may not know whether someone's st sq is a Level 2 or 3, but you know it's not level 4; with spins, you can't necessarily see which spins got dinged for levels, but you can always look at the protocol for that.
With jump GOE in particular, I think it's really important to remember that a fall (or falls) impacts the total.
For example, Boyang's net overall FS GOE (4.40, 1.52 for jumps) is quite low, but he lost a ton of points on a fall /< on the 4T (-4 GOE, -1 fall, -3.8 BV for the <). In fact, without the fall, his GOE would have been a respectable 8.40 total (5.52 jumps), ranking him third in both categories, and we can clearly see that the combined fall /< on the 4T was the reason he fell to second place.
Without the fall, his total score would have been 278.54 + 5 = 283.54; without the < it would have been 278.54 + 3.8 = 282.34. So if he had fallen but not < the 4T, or vice versa, he would have won. Can someone argue he lost for other reasons (e.g., that Patrick was overscored in the SP)? Sure, but this is a different way to look at it.
Finally, we can see that even though Boyang's spin and st sq GOE in FS is about half of Patrick's, relative to the field he ranks 6 in both categories. So overall, I'd say the judges recognize his talent and his improvement over last year, but are saying that he's not executing at the level of Patrick yet. Which for me is accurate.
In sum, Geek's analysis may not tell us whether a skater was gifted GOE / PCS on a particular element / in a certain category, but I find the data as presented really thought provoking - thank you Geek!
)
Maybe it was not fair to Adam. I'm not an expert and I could be wrong about the judges' concept on transitions, right? Like, I counted turns but I didn't account for the difficulty of each turns, so judges may appreciate fewer but more difficult ones etc. (Having said that, I still think he does way too many "stroking"... :think
