Serious Question about Patrick Chan's skating ability compared to other skaters

seniorita said:

i was not quoting you and replying directly, your post was just an occasion to say something myself. Many dont understand me, it is not the first time.



I think the two different pannels for TES and PCS would have been a great start as we had discussed also in the past, but since it we agreed it is not too realistic, we can keep complain?

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As informative as posts from gkelly can be - when I suggested a panel for tech and for components it seemed to draw a blank.

There are more complaints at GS about the marks for components than for the tech.

Some fans think that is OK and we should just continue with the pcs being little more than reputation marks. Perhaps some of these fans are artistically challenged people in real life.:think:

I may not have the answer but know the biggest problem with the IJS is the way the pcs are categorized and scored.

Who can honestly say it is more important to call out levels for spins while putting up with a system that can barely differenciate between SS, TR, CH, IN and PE. And understanding how they must work together to create a satisfying presentation.

I do not believe in 9 for TR, 7 for IN and 8 for CH because they are all part of the same thing.
Chan does more TR than most skaters but as a musician I can safely say he does not yet put it all togther musically and as far as true artistry goes. He is still learning and his skates appear to be going through the CoP motions rather than expressing anything meaningful as it relates to his music.

Doing more - the curse of skating by numbers - works in Chan's favor. Doing less, but creating a mood and having balance the way Weir at his best can do is penalized because the judges just don't know the difference - or the rules seem to be bent against good taste or anything different.

I am not a judge but I know style when I see it. Miki gets high pcs at times and for what?
Evan was getting huge pcs last season and I say for what? Who is the CoP kidding? Because Lori is Evan's choreographer she sold some people who should not be judging on his "artistry?"

Giime a break...and a half

The politics and reputation still rule skating.
Besides the FACT that artistry is subjective .........I say that no matter what we like it is purely comparitive, and never based on a number for IN, CH,r TR or SS - but ONLY on how they are blended together to create the intended effect. Obviously no one plans to fall down three times in an SP - but please don't tell me that deserves top pcs when it happens. That is a wreck of an SP and it demonstrates clearly the weakness of the CoP.

For now I call it the "Kwan factor" because if anyone thinks Patrick Chan is a more artistic skater than Michelle Kwan I would say - holy cow!

I can easily see how the CoP would rate Kwan as average artistically - basically for the crime of actually interpreting the music and not throwing in all the worthless CoP point getting gestures and moves.

Of course ultimately it would depend on who was politicing for her.........

wallylutz said:

For the sake of argument, say my objectivity has indeed been compromised for X reason as some angry and emotional fans here are alluding to. Just ignore what I say, what about gkelly's attempts to educate some of the ineducable posters here? It's almost hilarious if not sad that some people are threatening to quit this sport over the result of a GP? I think some fans are good at criticizing but often failed to realize the judges' job under IJS is to detach themselves from the ordinal outcome, hence, they may end up producing results that they emotionally disagree with at the end. I'd like to remind myself of Laura Lepisto in 2010 Worlds, my assessment was she should be 3rd in the LP in my book even though emotionally, like a lot of other people, it felt wrong to put her 3rd.

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Or some posters made their decisions based on their emotions first and are only using logic as a mere tool for argument to justify their positions.

I recall one of your posts where you differed with the judges, arguing that Yuna should have placed second over Mao in the LP at 2010 Worlds. I’m not sure how those circumstances differ much from here since both Chan and Yuna are similar in that they both have those invisible qualities that judges generously reward in their scores; hence, their high scores. Aren’t you employing a double standard? How do you reconcile these positions?

Based on the history of the way ISU judges score, I think reputation scoring is a plausible explanation for the results at SC. Take the case of Lysacek at the Olympics. One of the reasons he defeated Plushenko was because of his comparable PCS, and he received the score most likely because he was reigning world champion that year since many people were arguing that he lacked superior skating skills and didn’t deserve those scores.

For me, SC results would be easier to swallow if Chan’s scores had been in fact based on his reputation rather than performance-based. After all, reputation-based scoring is fair in its own way, since it’s preferable for a skater with sustainable talent to win rather than someone who just got lucky that day. If PCS was already predetermined, based on reputation, I think that would explain why Chan’s scores were not really affected by his mistakes.

If Chan’s PCS holds up, I think his only challenger would be Takahashi, since both receive comparable scores in the low to mid eighties (in LP). I’ll call them tier one skaters. Then there are tier two skaters---Oda, Abbott, Rippon etc---who score around mid to upper seventy range. At the outset, tier one skaters have ~7 point advantage in PCS over tier two, which will be difficult to surmount, except if tier one makes noticeable blunders.

wallylutz said:

For the sake of argument, say my objectivity has indeed been compromised for X reason as some angry and emotional fans here are alluding to. Just ignore what I say, what about gkelly's attempts to educate some of the ineducable posters here?

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Yeap ignore sounds good.
Maybe I must be the only one to think so but do we celebrate the rude week here, after the Halloween and people emerge like mushrooms? This was not the case even in Olympics, we had intense talks about skaters but we didnt insult eachother that way. It gets annoying.

Figure88 said:

After all, reputation-based scoring is fair in its own way, since it’s preferable for a skater with sustainable talent to win rather than someone who just got lucky that day.

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Oh, I don't agree with that at all. The skater who gets lucky that day wins that day's competition. That skater goes home with the gold medal, and the skater with the big reputation goes home with his reputation.

janetfan said:

As informative as posts from gkelly can be - when I suggested a panel for tech and for components it seemed to draw a blank.

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Actually, I composed a long reply about that, but when I had finished I realized that I didn't really have anything to contribute.

When the proposal comes up to have two separate judging panels, one for GOEs on technical elements and the other for Program Components, it is usually felt that the GOE panel doesn't have enough to do to justify bringing another nine people on board.

About a separate expert "artristry" panel, like the technical specialist and his group, GKelly didn't really address that question. He/she ("Grace or Gene? ) wrote that the technical specialists, being for the most part recent top level competitors, can better determine technical matters like the level of a footwork sequence than judges can, even well trained. By the same token, the "performance" panel might consist of expert professionals in the performing arts -- maybe they don't have to be skaters at all.

I do not believe in 9 for TR, 7 for IN and 8 for CH because they are all part of the same thing.

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Sport or art? We should take into account that the premise of the CoP is that Skating Skills and Transitions are part of the technical mark, along with base values and GOEs on individual elements. The other three take the place of the 6.0 second mark. I can easily imagine a program where the athlete does myriad counters, rockers, 3-turns, twizzles, spread eagles, Charlottes, split jumps, etc., etc., etc. -- but none of that contributed in any way to the performance, choreography and interpretation. That skater might indeed deserve a 9.0 in Transitions as a technical component, but a 4.5 on P/E, CH, and INT.

Edited to add: In fact, I think a better way to organize the program compenents is to give just two marks instead of five. One mark for SS and TR to cover stroking, edging and the variety, complexity and difficulty of non-listed elements, and a second mark for Performance Values, covering the old P/E, CH. and INT. (These marks could be scaled from 0.0 to 6.0 and we could call them the first mark and the second mark. )

colleen o'neill said:

But in the meantime, am I correct that this year the marks from more of the panel will be used to calculate the outcome ? ... Hhas that kicked in yet?

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Yes. I just checked it out

Here is how you can tell. If you look at the protocols from last year, you will see PCSs like 7.95, 6.35, 5.80. All of these are twentieths (7.95 = 7 and 19/20th, etc.)

The protocols this year have scores like 7.04, 6.57, and the like. These are 28ths. (7.04 = 7 and 1/28.)

This is because last year they used only five scores after the random draw and discarding the highest and lowest. The PCSs are graduated in fourths, so one forth divided by 5 is 1/20th. But this year there is no random draw, so it is 1/4 divided by 7 = 1/28th.

...won't this be some help?

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I don't think it will help solve the issues that are up for grabs on this thread. For what it is worth it gives results that are slightly more statistically reliable (about 18% more accurate).

But the main thing is, the random draw was ridiculous on its face, so good riddance just on general principles.

Figure88 said:

For me, SC results would be easier to swallow if Chan’s scores had been in fact based on his reputation rather than performance-based. After all, reputation-based scoring is fair in its own way, since it’s preferable for a skater with sustainable talent to win rather than someone who just got lucky that day. If PCS was already predetermined, based on reputation, I think that would explain why Chan’s scores were not really affected by his mistakes.

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It is impossible for me to swallow reputation-based socring for "sports".
I strongly believe someone who just got lucky that day should win, even if s/he is not considered to have that ability.
“Sports competition” is all about who performs the best in the day of competition. A strong contender, like Shaun White in skateboarding, “almost” always win because he not only has superior technique but also the ability to show it when it counts. If the placement is determined heavily by the competitor’s reputation before the competition is even started, much of fun and excitement that sports have to offer us are already lost. The way figure skating is scored now seriously undermines its credibility as a sport.

Mathman said:

About a separate expert "artristry" panel, like the technical specialist and his group, GKelly didn't really address that question. He/she ("Grace or Gene? )

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I'm a she, but the screen name was mainly inspired by Gene.

And so was Tomas Verner's SP choreography.

I can easily imagine a program where the athlete does myriad counters, rockers, 3-turns, twizzles, spread eagles, Charlottes, split jumps, etc., etc., etc. -- but none of that contributed in any way to the performance, choreography and interpretation. That skater might indeed deserve a 9.0 in Transitions as a technical component, but a 4.5 on P/E, CH, and INT.

I can imagine that too. It would be a very unbalanced skater/program, so we wouldn't see it very often, but theoretically possible. Maybe someone who's very shy and focused on technique, someone who would have loved school figures more than freeskating back in the day, and who has no interest in music or performance.

Edited to add: In fact, I think a better way to organize the program compenents is to give just two marks instead of five. One mark for SS and TR to cover stroking, edging and the variety, complexity and difficulty of non-listed elements, and a second mark for Performance Values, covering the old P/E, CH. and INT. (These marks could be scaled from 0.0 to 6.0 and we could call them the first mark and the second mark. )

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It would make sense to group them that way. But how would the math work out?

In the current system, it seems that the designers set the base marks for the elements based on their relative difficulty -- and there are still debates about exactly how much harder some elements than certain other elements; witness the major changes to the Scale of Values this season.

Those initial element values produced an expectation of how many points to expect from a typical short program and free program in each discipline and skill level. So then the program components were set up so that adding the scores for a skater's various components together and multiplying by the factor assigned to that discipline, level, and kind of program would produce a number similar in value to the elements score. Skaters with balanced skills can be expected to earn TES and PCS within a couple points of each other. Skaters who fall more on the "athlete" side of the athlete/artist dichotomy will earn much higher TES (except when they make several major mistakes), and skaters who are more on the "artist" side will tend to have higher PCS even when they don't make mistakes.

Before factoring, or in the men's short program where the factor is 1.0, the maximum PCS that a skater could earn would be 50.0, if he got 10.0 from all the judges from all the components. No one has come close to that, but if the system sticks around in approximately the same form until the next John Curry or Torvill & Dean comes along, maybe someone will.

Meanwhile the TES is open ended, especially in the long program.
Plushenko got 49.69 TES in the short program at 2006 Olympics (and 40.97 PCS), with eight elements and one quad. How soon till someone surpasses that with seven elements and 2 quads by today's rules and today's quad-generous Scale of Values?

If we use two component marks instead of five, on a scale of 0 to 6.0, then the maximum unfactored total for perfect component score would be 12.0. How would you want to factor that in the men's SP, so that those two scores can balance TES of 50+ for an extraordinary technical performance? How about in the LP and other disciplines?

I assume that judges would have increments of 0.1 to work with instead of 0.25.

Personally, I can more easily put up with seeing some controversial results here and there than seeing talented athletes ending their career far too early because of injuries. Thinking about those 'quad jumpers' of the past and their injury-ridden careers and post-competitive physical conditions makes me really sad. Figure skaters competitive career is relatively short, compared to other sports, and if the rules are there not only to protect them from career-ending injuries but also to ensure their well-being in the life after FS, then I am all happy for that.

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Well I have to ask this Patrick Chan falling multiple times in a program is hardly a "flukish occurance." And I'll say that its not like Nobunari Oda is some no name skater. At Cup of China last year, Nobunari Oda defeated the reigning World Champion (and eventual Olympic Champion) The only time Evan got defeated last year internationally (Abbott defeated him at Nationals). And Evan skated MUCH better than Patrick Chan skated at Skate Canada. Oda was on the Grand Prix Final podium last year too.
And didn't Rippon recently beat Daisuke and Plushenko. I guess what I'd say is that Oda and Rippon both have defeated skaters with more of a reputation than Chan.

And in the end the whole point of sports is the idea that you have to perform well that day in order to win. Now sure, in a close call things are likely going to go to the skater with more of a reputation. But if the reputation athlete performs poorly why shouldn't they lose. Everyone has a bad day once in awhile, but you still have to deliver.

I think the best way to institute a little more fairness is to introduce more penalities for falls. And Mandatory deductions in Performance/Execution. These open ended rules can make it difficult for judges many who face a ton of pressure from their own federations.

[Responding to GKelly's post #148]

About factoring, first IMHO there is nothing particularly sacrosanct about arranging things so that individual elements add up to about the same number of points as the value given to the program as a whole.

On the element side, the weight between "sport" (base values) and "art" (GOEs) is about what? 5 or 6 to 1? (Hard to measure because of plus and minus GOEs).

On the program side, the split is tech 40%, artistry 60%.

If there were two program scores, roughly one score for SS and TR and one score for P/E, CH and INT, these two scores could be weighted any way we liked to satisfy whatever notion of "balance" we wished, either between sport and art or between elements and program.

Joesitz doesn't like the name "Skating Skills" as one of the components because the name sounds like it should include everything the skater does on the ice. I have the same problem with the "Execution" part of Performance and Execution. How well you "execute" your program -- isn't that everything? If you have great choreography but fail to execute it, how can you get any points for that, either in P/E or in CH? If you have in your mind a wonderful interpretation of the music, but do not bring it to the ice -- how can that be judged?

If there were two program scores, roughly one score for SS and TR and one score for P/E, CH and INT, these two scores could be weighted any way we liked to satisfy whatever notion of "balance" we wished, either between sport and art or between elements and program.

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So what do you recommend?

You've thrown an interesting idea out here for consideration, inspired by general philosophical grounds.

OK, so we decide it's worth pursuing. Next comes the nitty-gritty work of figuring out the details. Care to get us started?

^ Actually do some work? Instead of philosophizing and pontificating?

OK, here are my preliminary thoughts.

First, the thing about trying to make the program components add up to the same amount as the elements scores is kind of a red herring. If we suddenly decided to add 50 points to everyone’s PCSs across the board that would not change any of the placements nor the margins of victory, and it would not be giving greater relative weight to PCSs – it would just look funny in the protocols.

Still, I do like this aspect of the CoP, the separation of scores into elements scores and program scores. The old separation into technical and presentation was somewhat ill-defined, IMHO. A triple Axel turned with precise technique can also be a thing of beauty.

Likewise I have no quarrel with the idea of GOEs on technical elements, understanding that GOEs themselves can reflect both technical mastery and artistic expression.

So the idea that I threw out is not very radical at all. Leave the elements side as is and have the judges give two program components scores, one to evaluate the overall technical skills that the skater presented throughout the program, and the other (even more subjective, perhaps) to evaluate the effectiveness of the program as performance art.

Weigh the two program scores equally and weight them, as currently, to add to about the same expected value as the TES. I have become used to the quarter-point gradations in PCSs. This seems to work OK to give the judges room enough to place the skaters where they want them. At the same time, these gradations are so close together that they do not allow us the illusion that there is anything objective about saying that this performance is worth exactly 6.25 points, while that is worth 6.50. This, I think, is a good thing. Why pretend?

This is not really much of a change and does not address the problems under discussion in this thread, like reputation scoring and how many times we will let Patrick Chan fall down before we do something about it. The main advantage, in my mind, is that this system would be a little more honest as a reflection of how figure skating judging actually works.

Figure88 said:

Based on the history of the way ISU judges score, I think reputation scoring is a plausible explanation for the results at SC. Take the case of Lysacek at the Olympics. One of the reasons he defeated Plushenko was because of his comparable PCS, and he received the score most likely because he was reigning world champion that year since many people were arguing that he lacked superior skating skills and didn’t deserve those scores.

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Hmm, if one believes that Lysacek got reputation scores in PCS as the reigning World champion, shouldn´t one also remember that Plushenko surely must have gotten more reputation points as the reigning Olympic gold medalist (plus for all his other impressive past merits)? In Vancouver Lysacek won the freeskate based on technical elements, their PCS was the same. Who was definetely very much held up in PCS? Plushenko, compared to him Lysacek should have gotten way higher (or Plushenko way lower) PCS in some areas (at least in transitions and choreography), in my opinion.

If we use two component marks instead of five, on a scale of 0 to 6.0

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I got all ...until this Why would the pcs have the scale of 1 to 6 instead of 10? I mean I didnt get what it serves to change the scale :

Jaana said:

Hmm, if one believes that Lysacek got reputation scores in PCS as the reigning World champion, shouldn´t one also remember that Plushenko surely must have gotten more reputation points as the reigning Olympic gold medalist (plus for all his other impressive past merits)? In Vancouver Lysacek won the freeskate based on technical elements, their PCS was the same. Who was definetely very much held up in PCS? Plushenko, compared to him Lysacek should have gotten way higher (or Plushenko way lower) PCS in some areas (at least in transitions and choreography), in my opinion.

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They were both held up, each one in different areas but there are other skaters who were also very held up in PCS, specially Lambiel IMO.

seniorita said:

I got all ...until this Why would the pcs have the scale of 1 to 6 instead of 10? I mean I didnt get what it serves to change the scale :

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It was kind of a joke, meaning, "let's go back to the old system."

However, there is a sound psychological reason why scoring from 0 to 6 makes sense. Lots of studies have shown that most people can distinguish about 6 gradations, and with training and practice, maybe 7. You can try this experiment at home. make 6 sticks of six different lengths, then hold up one at random and see if you can gues whether that is, say, the third longest or the fourth longest. You can!

But if you do it with ten sticks, you can't. Just the way our brains work. (Of course holding up two sticks together and deciding which of the two is longer can always be done, even if they are very close together -- that's a different experiment.)

As for scoring from 1 to 10, there is nothing special about the number 10 except that we primates have 10 fingers, so we decided to count by tens.

That is also why I have to laugh at the CoP's claim to objectivity. In the PCSs there are 41 possible scores, 0.00, 0.25, 0.50,...9.75, 10.00. It is quite out of the question to be alble to define what features a program should have to be valued at 3.50, rather than 3.75 in choreography. However, that is not how these scores are used. Instead, it goes like this. The competition is at the level of intermediate. The range of scores for programs at this level are, say, from 3.00 to 4.50. The skaters that the judges like best are given 4.00 and 4.25, and the programs that are of lesser quality might get 3.25 or 3.50.

In other words, just like ordinal 6.0 judging. My point is, why pretend we are doing anything different from what we have always done?

Mathman said:

I think we can all agree that reputation and past results should not play a role in how a competition is scored. But I haven't heard any suggestions about what we can do to bring about better judging, except -- "make the judges do a better job."

Well, we are all for that, of course.

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I think if we allowed the Judges' names and countries they represent to be known, the reputation of the judges would be at stake.
The only reason we have secret judging is due to The Scandal. That scandal, regardless of the competition results, led to the creation of secret judging and saved Cinquanta's a$$.

We have no way of making the judges do a better job if we do not know their names and what country they represent on the Panel.

Mathman said:

^ Actually do some work? Instead of philosophizing and pontificating?

Weight the two program scores equally and weight them, as currently, to add to about the same expected value as the TES. I have become used to the quarter-point gradations in PCSs. This seems to work OK to give the judges room enough to place the skaters where they want them.

At the same time, these gradations are so close together that they do not allow us the illusion that there is anything objective about saying that this performance is worth exactly 6.25 points, while that is worth 6.50. This, I think, is a good thing. Why pretend?

.

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Yes, you are right it is easier to pontificate ............ but this is a difficult question.

On your first point I have to wonder about weighting your suggested PCS format to being equal with the TES. I get the feeling that ISU does not want them equal. Am I wrong to wonder if it is part of ISU's current philosphical thinking (if such a thing exists) that wants skating to be more of a "real sport" and less about "performance art."

Hard to explain what I mean - but as an example I would suggest Patrick's very busy skating between recognized elements seems to be worth alot more than the way Alissa's spins can feel to be not just a spin - but part of the choreographic concept of her program.

Why is it that steps seem to be more about athleticism than relating to the music? Would Kwan's steps cut it today? They were often the highlight of her programs and seemed to be about expression and relating to the music more than what we see today.

Or the way a clean Joubert can get very high pcs even though casual skating fans can see Jeremy's CH, IN and TR is more substancial and intricate. Of course I am offering thoughts that are subjective.

This leads to your second comment which I don't understand. Could you please elaborate on it?

I have thought about remarks you have made in the past - when you referred to "musical judges" like Inman and Hoffman. Why were they considered "musical judges" ?

Was it perhaps that they not only valued artistry more than other judges but demonstrated an expertise in this area? What happens when a judging panel has several "musical judges" and several "tech judges" ? Is this ideal - or in a more perfect world would all of the judges be on the same page? Such differences in what judges value along with federation loyalties does not sound like a formula for the best results and ISU was self-serving but not stupid when they made the judges scores anonymous.

Mathman said:

It was kind of a joke, meaning, "let's go back to the old system."

However, there is a sound psychological reason why scoring from 0 to 6 makes sense. Lots of studies have shown that most people can distinguish about 6 gradations, and with training and practice, maybe 7. You can try this experiment at home. make 6 sticks of six diffewrent lengths, then hold up one at random and see if you can gues whether that is, say, the third longest or the fourth longest. You can!

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Well, that's why the GOEs go from -3 to +3 instead of, say, -5 to +5 (if judges are also rating difficulty instead of having a tech panel assign levels), or -5 to +2 (if they're not assessing difficulty at all), even though those scales may more accurately reflect the range of possible errors and enhancements one might expect in an individual element.

That's also one reason why school figures were judged on a scale of 0 ("not skated") to 6 ("perfect and flawless").

The difficulty of the element or the figure is established in its base mark or scoring factor, and then the judges evaluate the quality on that 7-point scale.

With the PCS, I don't think that's what they're doing.

In very rough terms, I'd say that whole number before the decimal point is not comparing the skaters to each other at all. It's assigning a general skill level to the skater, especially in the Skating Skills mark -- the "Stroking, Edgework, and Transitions" mark if you want to combine and rename. The scale is something like 0 = beginner stumbling around on two feet, 6 or 10 = perfect/best in the world now and among the best ever.

Different judges might have different mental benchmarks for all the levels in between, and different benchmarks under 6.0 vs. 10.0 scales.

Under 6.0, the numbers applied to content as well as quality in programs -- e.g., I've heard of 3.5 = double axel as hardest jump offered as a guideline.
Some federations have tests for skating skills only outside the context of a program, to replace school figures. In the US we have Moves in the Field tests that measure power, edge quality, etc., on increasingly difficult stroking exercises and turns, with defined passing averages for each level. The passing average for senior level is 4.5 on a scale of 6.0.

So, on that scale, if you were judging quality and difficulty of skating only, aside from elements and artistry, then 4.5 would represent approximately minimum skill level expected to pass the US senior tests, or the equivalent in other countries. All the scores below 4.5 would represent skaters who don't look good enough for seniors, or so-so senior skaters having a bad performance.

The scale is calibrated differently if it goes from 0 to 10 instead of 0 to 6. But it seems that the way it's being used is to give more room at the top to distinguish among the skaters who have achieved well beyond minimum senior standard, to separate the good from the great. Scores in the 4s still seem to represent approximately average junior/weak senior standard, but of course every judge has a slightly different internal mental scale.

So for Skating Skills in a competition below senior level, the scores might represent approximately which test level the skater shows appropriate skills for. You're never going to see a competition where skaters who deserve scores in the low 1s for skating skills will be competing against skaters who deserve high 5s . . . unless those 1s are for an injured skater who goes out there and doesn't do much of anything.

Then the decimal places allow the judges to indicate finer distinctions between skaters. Officially they're not supposed to be comparing one skater to another directly, but to make sure they're being consistent within that competition they probably often do.

Judges had to recalibrate their mental scales when the scoring changed from 6.0 to 10.0. Going back to a 6.0 scale would mean another major mental shift. It could be done, but I'm not sure there would be any benefit to doing so. And it might result in narrowing down the room for distinction between good and great at the top.

For Performance/Execution/Choreography/Interpretation, whether scored with one number or three, there isn't a similar standard benchmark for different skill levels. Judges have to make up their own expectations of what they see as a 2.0 or a 4.0 or a 6.0 or whatever, on either scale. The easiest way to set those expectations is probably to visualize what they've seen in those areas on average from skaters with 4.0 skating skills and set that mental image as a 4.0 benchmark, and then score skaters higher or lower in relation to that image. Which is why they tend to give scores for those components that go up or down from the Skating Skills score by a few 0.25 increments, and we don't often see very different marks for different components.

So probably what we need is guidelines and training to help judges agree on what 4.0 or 5.0 presentation might look like and recognize it and then adjust with decimal places without even worrying about the quality of the skating.

Is this something that performing artists with no skating background could learn to apply equally well, after being instructed about the basic possibilities and limitations of the skating medium?

What might be some good guidelines to help define those components better?

Mathman said:

That is also why I have to laugh at the CoP's claim to objectivity. In the PCSs there are 41 possible scores, 0.00, 0.25, 0.50,...9.75, 10.00. It is quite out of the question to be alble to define what features a program should have to be valued at 3.50, rather than 3.75 in choreography. However, that is not how these scores are used. Instead, it goes like this. The competition is at the level of intermediate. The range of scores for programs at this level are, say, from 3.00 to 4.50. The skaters that the judges like best are given 4.00 and 4.25, and the programs that are of lesser quality might get 3.25 or 3.50.

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Continuing on to address this more directly.

First of all, there's no rule that says the scores for intermediate competitions have to range from 3.00 to 4.50. In any given competition they might, although that would be a strong event at that level. Many intermediates get scores in the 2s. And occasionally a very exceptional one might break 5.0.

But say a judge has in her mind that 3.0 is average for an intermediate, 3.5 is good, 4.0 is very good at that level, and 4.5 or higher is outstanding.

So she sees a skater whose choreography is pretty good for intermediate level. Does she immediately think 3.0 or 3.5? Does she then look at the program (in memory and notes after it's over) to consider the fine points and decide whether to use the decimals to go up or down a little? Maybe mentally compare that skater to a previous one she already gave 3.0 or 3.5, to see if this one deserves to be higher or lower or is close enough to deserve the same score?

If there were official guidelines or standards as to what constitutes 3.0, the judge could compare this performance to that benchmark and decide whether it just meets that standard or deserves a little extra.

There might be time only to consider the general impression and the most salient points about the choreography. What's salient to another judge or another observer might get left out of that judge's decision. But the decision shouldn't be and when judges are judging correctly is not based on which skater the judge "likes best." It might be accurate to say it's based on whose choreography, as presented in those performances, the judge likes best, according to that judge's understanding of the guidelines and that judge's perceptions of the overall impression and salient choreographic aspects of the performance.

However, if an observer doesn't know what's going on in that judge's head (how can we?) or what the official guidelines are (hasn't read the published PCS guidelines or thinks they're too vague), and doesn't agree with the judge's estimation, then it's easy to summarize the process as "Oh, that judge liked the skater she gave 3.5 better than the skater she gave 3.0." But that trivializes and, I think, distorts what the judges are actually doing.