Men's PCS at Worlds. | Page 8 | Golden Skate

Men's PCS at Worlds.

skatinginbc

Medalist
Joined
Aug 26, 2010
How do you define "wrong"?
How do you define "right"? Why are you so sure the claim that the current system might be wrong is not right? It all comes down to the logic, doesn't it? If one presents his opinion with logic, why do you want to object it?
Timing...is a big part of Interpretation, even bigger for ice dancing than for freestyle. But it's not mentioned in the criteria for Performance/Execution (for which the word "presentation" could be used as a casual synonym) or Choreography at all.)
Performance entails the emotional and intellectual involvement of the skater as he translates the intent of the music and choreography. When a skater chases after the music for a prolonged period, it becomes harder for the viewers to see it as an "honest" performance because feeling the music and lagging behind can hardly go together. Also, multiple visible errors (e.g., leg dropping in a spin, etc.) diminish the degree of precision in delivery.
One of the criteria for CH is Phrasing and Form (movements and parts structured to match the phrasing of the music). Phrasing has a beginning and an end like a sentence which has a capitalized first word and the end punctuation mark. When the first word is not capitalized, the sentence becomes harder to read. When the timing of a musical phrase is mismatched, the phrase loses its clarity (BTW, some pianists make inaudible or low hums for the very purpose of phrasing--to find out when the melody needs to "breathe" (the beginning and the end of the musical phrase)). The choreography component concerns what is actually performed, not what was originally designed.
If you were a judge..., you could bring your musical expertise to the judges' stand...Another judge might be an orthopedist by profession with a background in ballet and kinesiology...Another judge might be a visual artist who focuses primarily on the shapes that the body and the movement paths make in space...Another judge might be tone deaf...And so forth.
And therefore we expect a greater variation among scores in this very subjective category. But strangely, all judges but one gave a narrow corridor of scores. Why is that? One possible reason is "reputation judging"--The judges might have assigned scores based on those that the skater received in a prior competition. Another reason is "halo effect". The judges' evaluations on the components might have been influenced by a global evaluation, such as GOEs and the first category of the components. We often overlook the GOE impact on PCS. Since the judges focus their attention on elements during the performance, the impression based on the GOE scores they just gave is likely to influence their holistic PCS evaluations.
In fact, you used your own version of the scoring to give more weight to what's important to you.
I gave my reason in Post #91. Is it a crime to think outside the box? How do we find areas for improvement if we all think in the same box? This thread invites people to play the judge. Instead of criticizing my scores, why don't you come out and give your scores and rationales? It's almost like getting yelled at for making a prediction in a prediction thread.
 
Last edited:

deedee1

Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 14, 2007
And the funny thing is that the singular form of bacteria is NOT bacterion, but bacterium.

I've learned two more new thing relating to English words today, thanks to Olympia and skatinginbc. :agree:

OT, but what is interesting is irregular forms on words and/or inconsistencies in grammar actually happen in every language. Because the language, as way of communication tool, comes in 'colloquial forms', then in 'literary forms' much later.
That's why some people just hate to study their mother tongue as a curriculum at school.

And if I talk about educational system in Japan, that's one of the reasons to make it more difficult for Japanese to speak English, even studying it at school for 6 years. Because we are forced to learn grammar first. Some elite business people can read, say, the Time magazine effortlessly, but when it comes to 'speak out', it takes more time for them due to all the strict and stupid rules on grammar in their head.
My husband once gave me a series of questions: "why do some people say 'hi, there!', instead of hello? I know 'hi' and 'there', of course. But why does the word 'there' have to be combined with 'hi' to express hello?? What does 'there' mean in this circumstance??? Is it replaceable with 'here'????"
"I do not know. We just say so. Some just prefer saying that, to sound more casual, maybe? No big deal, anyway." I shrugged. :p
Up until now, he always prefers hello, instead of hi, there. I was a bad tutor in English for him, I guess.:laugh:

Anyway, good news is if I can still learn new things at the age of 852163:biggrin:, why not skaters?

Go gilrs and go boys! You can do it!:rock:
 
Last edited:

skatinginbc

Medalist
Joined
Aug 26, 2010
why do some people say 'hi, there!', instead of hello? I know 'hi' and 'there', of course. But why does the word 'there' have to be combined with 'hi' to express hello?? What does 'there' mean in this circumstance???
German "hei da" (literally "hi there") was borrowed into Middle English as "heyda" and later "heyday", which was an archaic exclamation of cheerfulness, excitement and surprise and later reanalyzed as "high day" and adopted the meaning of "prime". Still, the construction of "hei" (hi) + "da" (there) was an ancient concept, literally "Hi, (one who is over) there" with an implication of physical distance, similar to the old nautical expression "Ahoy, there".

"Hello" is quite modern actually, first recorded in the late 19th century.
 

gkelly

Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
How do you define "right"?

For program components, and 6.0 whole placements as well as actual scores, I define "right" as any defensible score or ranking according to the rules and standards at the time. Which means there can often be more than one right answer. The official results are the consensus of the answers by that particular panel of officials on that particular day. So that consensus becomes the official right answer that supersedes all other possible right answers. (Contrary to a way of theorizing skating results that Mathman has invoked in the past, I don't think there's a platonic ideal right answer that preexists outside of the humans working within the guidelines to arrive at a consensus.)

Wrong answers would be those that are not defensible according to the rules as they are written and the standards as trained and practiced.

For program components, that would include data entry errors, judges intentionally manipulating scores to try to give higher scores to the skater they want to place higher rather than the skater they actually thought did better on that component according to the stated criteria, or that are based on outright misperceptions or misconceptions (for example, if -- and I'm not saying that is the case with Chan at Worlds -- someone judging by video marked a skater low because of being off time and then it turned out that the skater hadn't been off time at all but the audio track was off on the video; or a judge marked a skater down for failing to interpret what the judge thought was the original programmatic intent of the music when in fact the skater's and choreographer's intention with that program does match the composer's intent, or the skater and choreographer have chosen to repurpose the music in a different but coherent way).

Performance entails the emotional and intellectual involvement of the skater as he translates the intent of the music and choreography. When a skater chases after the music for a prolonged period, it becomes harder for the viewers to see it as an "honest" performance because feeling the music and lagging behind can hardly go together.

I would say that that is true only of viewers for whom "honesty" in connection to the music is more important than all the other criteria for those three components.

It's your interpretation of those criteria that, for example, relation to the music is more important than relation to the space. Which makes you right according to your perception and your priorities, as just one person giving his/her own evaluation. It doesn't give you the authority to say that if the individuals on the panels or the guidelines they were taught give equal or greater weight to other criteria that those individuals and those guidelines are wrong.

Also, multiple visible errors (e.g., leg dropping in a spin, etc.) diminish the degree of precision in delivery.

Oh, are we going to go there? If we look for every tiny flaw and weakness in every moment of the program, I'm not sure that Takahashi would fare so well, let alone Hanyu or Joubert.
But ultimately, it's easier to forgive momentary weaknesses in skaters we generally have a positive affect towards, whereas they seem magnified in skaters we already have negative feelings for. Also, completely apart from the feelings about specific skaters, we might each have different pet peeves or kinds of flaws that we notice most and that bother us most. One judge might be irritated by lack of stretch or alignment; another might be more irritated by scratchiness on the blades. That doesn't make one more right than the other.

So if you say "I saw x, y, z little errors in Skater L's performance. They bothered me and so I marked him down," you're correct for you. You saw them. They bothered you.
Another judge says "I saw q, r, s little errors in Skater M's performance. They bothered me and so I marked them down." You didn't notice those little errors, or they didn't bother you so you forgot about them.
You gave L higher scores than M, and this other judge gave M higher scores than L. You're both right if you each judged according to what you saw. All I object to is your saying that the other judge is wrong, as if your perceptions are the only correct truth.

And therefore we expect a greater variation among scores in this very subjective category. But strangely, all judges but one gave a narrow corridor of scores. Why is that? One possible reason is "reputation judging"--The judges assigned scores based on those that the skater received in a prior competition. Another reason is "halo effect". The judges' evaluations on the components were influenced by a global evaluation, such as GOEs and the first category (i.e., skating skills) of the components. We often overlook the GOE impact on PCS. Since the judges pay their attention on individual elements during the performance, the impression based on the GOE scores they just gave is likely to influence their holistic PCS evaluations.

This is undoubtedly true, to the extent that it's part of the nature of human perceptions. But you're not immune from it either. Judges who were present in the arena and judging according to years of evaluating skating will have their presentation scores influenced by their perceptions of the skating as a whole.

It seems that you are having your evaluation of all the other presentation criteria influenced by your perception of the musical phrasing, which is fine as far as it goes as long as you acknowledge that your perceptions and the ways they're influenced by the criteria that are most important to you are specific to you and not universal truths that everyone who disagrees is ignoring.

Or if you are actively ignoring all the other presentation criteria, well, then that starts to get less defensible.

I gave my reason in #91. Is it a crime to think outside the box?

No. What I'm objecting to is characterizing those who think within the box as being wrong.

I won't use the word "wrong," but I will say I don't like the fact that you combined all the presentation components into one and then severely dinged Chan for his musical failures in your perception, so that his strengths in areas like patterning over the ice, especially compared to Joubert, or in carriage and clarity, especially compared to Hanyu.
That's your prerogative, but I think you're discounting some of the reasons why the official judges did score him more highly in those areas (although I can't read the judges' minds and they're not posting their reasonings here), that higher scores than you would give to those components individually and as a whole are not incorrect scores by definition.

Which is why I also think it's useful to separate those components instead of giving one global score for presentation. In some ways, it would almost be useful if those components could be divided even further. Just not feasible for the same judges to score in more detail while also scoring GOEs and skating skills and transitions.

I do think that in general the judging would benefit from judges being more educated about principles of visual and performing arts and from

How do we find areas for improvement if we all think in the same box? This thread invites people to play the judge. Instead of criticizing my scores, why don't you come out and give your scores and rationales? It's almost like getting yelled at for making a prediction in a prediction thread.

I explained early on in this thread why I don't feel comfortable (don't feel honest) assigning scores after the fact.
I also have a tendency to play devil's advocate. So I could take any of the top 4 skaters and make a case for why he should have had the highest (or lowest of those four) total score for P/E, CH, and IN combined, by being selective in the criteria I emphasize for each of the skaters.

What I could do honestly, is to analyze and write up each of the areas of strength and weakness that I perceive in each performance. Not assigning numbers, but giving the reasons behind whatever numbers I would have come up with. But it would take a lot of time which I don't have right now. Too bad we can't just sit down and watch together and comment out loud, so I could point out easily in real time what what I'm seeing, and you could as well.

I do learn from reading yours and Bluebonnet's and others' analysis of the timing. But I'm not seeing the big problem in Chan's timing that you do. Maybe that's because you're more musically attuned than I am. Maybe not.

I'm just saying:
Maybe musical timing colors your perception of all the other criteria so significantly that you experience a halo effect enhancing your perception of everything else about the presentation of a skater who does that well and negatively impacts your perception of everything else about a skater for whom you perceive major problems in that area.

That's right for your perception and it would be right to try to generalize in the training for a musical-expression-on-ice contest. (Which, arguably, is what ice dancing is supposed to be.)

But if other judges' appreciation of blade-to-ice skill colors their perception of allthe other criteria so significantly that they experience a halo effect enhancing their perception of everything else about the presentation of a skater who does that well -- that's not wrong.

Since this is, after all, a skating contest, it's probably more right for skating ability to spill over into other components than for musical timing to spill over into other components.

There is, after all, still that "effortless flow over the ice surface" phrase in the Interpretation criteria.
 
Joined
Aug 16, 2009
Two entirely new pieces of information for me! Thanks, BC.

At least that term has an explanation. There are so many idiomatic phrases that seem to have no relationship whatever with their actual meaning. I'm sure every language has such idioms. They can really trip you up.

I learned French by grammar first, too. It got so much easier to communicate when I got to college, and the class was conducted in the language. At first, we all sat there in fear, but eventually we got used to opening our mouths.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
gkelly said:
Contrary to a way of theorizing skating results that Mathman has invoked in the past, I don't think there's a platonic ideal right answer that preexists outside of the humans working within the guidelines to arrive at a consensus.

No, no, a thousand times no. I believe the exact opposite.

That is why I feel that the CoP is completely the wrong way to go about figure skating judging. When we assign numbers to something there is an implicit assumption that these numbers mean something. In fact, they don't. Their only meaning is, these are the numbers we assigned. Obviously, then, these numbers are "right" by default. I do not subscribe to this view.

Ordinal placements, on the other hand, do mean something. They mean that judge number three thought that skater A was better than skater B. To me, there is an honesty about that statement that, try as it might, the CoP cannot veil or obscure.

This is a judged sport. It is the CoP that pretends otherwise, referring silently to the Platonic ideal of a perfectly performed element or a perfectly composed program, and then tries to match up numbers as to how closely the actual performance measures up.

My main (and really my only) beef is this. I like figure skating. But I love numbers. I hate like anything to see them abused. I hate to see them forced into unwilling service by taskmasters who do not respect what they are.

That having been said, as a practical matter I am not against the CoP. It works as well as anything else in determining a winner to a skating competition, so pragmatically speaking I say, whatever. But I do not accept the argument that I can't complain about the judging system because one of the rules of the judging system is that I can't complain about the judging system.
 

gkelly

Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
No, no, a thousand times no. I believe the exact opposite.

I said you had invoked it, not that you supported it. ;)

That is why I feel that the CoP is completely the wrong way to go about figure skating judging. When we assign numbers to something there is an implicit assumption that these numbers mean something. In fact, they don't. Their only meaning is, these are the numbers we assigned. Obviously, then, these numbers are "right" by default. I do not subscribe to this view.

Ordinal placements, on the other hand, do mean something. They mean that judge number three thought that skater A was better than skater B. To me, there is an honesty about that statement that, try as it might, the CoP cannot veil or obscure.

Except, I think that it's more subject to unconscious psychological effects and more variable in each judge emphasizing whatever qualities are most important to that judge.

No system is perfect.

But I do not accept the argument that I can't complain about the judging system because one of the rules of the judging system is that I can't complain about the judging system.

Ha!
Complain all you like. And where applicable, I'll respond that I actually like something that you don't like, or I'll agree I don't like it in principle but I understand why it's more practicable to do things that way.
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
Here is an example of what I am talking about. Skatinginbc has proposed a system in which the difficulty score and the the execution score are multiplied. Before we rush in, I think there are two questions that have to be addressed.

(1) What would be the practical effect of such a system, and would it be beneficial?

But I am more interested in

(2) Why multiply? What is the rationale for viewing these numbers in a multiplicative context? Yes, we have two numbers and we know how to multiply. It does not necessarily follow that the product captures the qauntity that we are trying to measure, or even that it has a natural mathematical interpretation.
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
bluebonnet said:
But I think he had timing issue only in the last one minute of his program and he got -1 deduction for that already, also he got -0.79 off, which means that he got only 8.21 on IN.

I don't think that is actually right, according to the rules. The -1 deduction is not for finishing behind the music, it is for exceeding the four and a half minutes that are allotted for a men's long program. (I think there is a couple of seconds leeway.) The time starts when the skater begins to move and ends when he stops moving. It has nothing to do with music.

If you think that the correct score, according to the rules, for Patrick's Interpretation, is 8.21, then it seem like you should be curious about why the judges gave him 9's.

Yes, the judges know more than we do. Still, I am curious. No one has yet offered a point-by-point justification of all these 9s, citing the published criteria of the CoP. The only response to fan's curiosity is, "judgie knows best."
 

Robeye

Final Flight
Joined
Feb 16, 2010
No, no, a thousand times no. I believe the exact opposite.

That is why I feel that the CoP is completely the wrong way to go about figure skating judging. When we assign numbers to something there is an implicit assumption that these numbers mean something. In fact, they don't. Their only meaning is, these are the numbers we assigned. Obviously, then, these numbers are "right" by default. I do not subscribe to this view.

Ordinal placements, on the other hand, do mean something. They mean that judge number three thought that skater A was better than skater B. To me, there is an honesty about that statement that, try as it might, the CoP cannot veil or obscure.

This is a judged sport. It is the CoP that pretends otherwise, referring silently to the Platonic ideal of a perfectly performed element or a perfectly composed program, and then tries to match up numbers as to how closely the actual performance measures up.

My main (and really my only) beef is this. I like figure skating. But I love numbers. I hate like anything to see them abused. I hate to see them forced into unwilling service by taskmasters who do not respect what they are.

That having been said, as a practical matter I am not against the CoP. It works as well as anything else in determining a winner to a skating competition, so pragmatically speaking I say, whatever. But I do not accept the argument that I can't complain about the judging system because one of the rules of the judging system is that I can't complain about the judging system.
I agree with almost everything you've said here (almost ;)). Where I diverge a bit is in being a kind of Platonist with regard to skating, a pragmatic Platonist as far as the "technical" aspects are concerned (which potentially includes skating skills and transitions), and a "modifed", or maybe even "evolutionary" Platonist with regard to the aesthetic aspects. Allow me to unpack:

-Both by concept as well as by personal observation (whatever that's worth), I believe that there is a right way to do a jump, a spin, change edges, etc., and a wrong way (actually, the wrong ways are endless, and may be the single biggest source of creativity in skating. It reminds me of the comment by Tolstoy in Anna Karenina, that happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. :p). And pragmatically speaking, that's it's possible to place a reasonably precise numeric value on it, signifying just how right/wrong it was.

-With regard to the artistic, my own humble view is that ground for a "right" and "wrong" way can be achieved under at least two approaches. The first possibility is that the audience (including both general spectators and judges) share a fairly uniform set of aesthetic values. We can see real-life examples of successful cases in societies such as Athens of the classical period, which is what allowed the drama competitions to come off without causing riots among disgruntled fans (that and the lack of the internet). Of course, the much more diverse nature of modern skating audiences makes this a bit more difficult to achieve, but it has not, in my view, completely erased the phenomenon of value commonality. I would argue that there exists a kind of "skating culture" that cuts across traditional boundaries, which skaters, judges, and knowledgeable viewers all implicitly acknowledge, which dictates, at least in broad strokes, what is to be considered good or bad performance in skating, whether one is American, European, Asian, or whatever.

More fundamentally, what allows such a skating culture to be understood, learned, and felt by diverse audiences is that the principles of aesthetics are ultimately based on reactions to physical cues which are shared by all human beings as human beings. We evolved both the ability to recognize the aesthetic via commonly shared modes of emotional response, and to be sensitive to certain types of cues as being more pleasing than others. This is why music is universal, dance is universal, among all societies wherever they are (except maybe the Amish), and why a person from one culture can learn to appreciate the art of another. It is why the rhythmic (as opposed to the arhythmic or chaotic) is an almost universal preference, for example. Possibly because (my speculation here) we recognize, on an atavistic level, that it represents health and life, in contrast to sickness and death. The implication of this is that education of viewers is both possible and desirable.

While it may not strictly satisfy any metaphysical criterion :))) for "objectivity", it fulfills that function for all human intents and purposes. I think it extremely important that skating fans come to terms with this. This is the reason that I vigorously object to the notion that artistry (in general, but for skating in particular) is "subjective", in the sense that there is no right answer, or that conversely, any notion is in principle as right as any other. If this were the case, then we are on a sharply steep and slippery slope, and at the bottom of it, we find that there is no tenable justification whatsoever for retaining the artistic/performance aspect in what is, after all, a competitive endeavor. We will have succeeded in throwing the baby out with the bath water.

That being said, I entirely agree with you that, given the more holistic nature of artistic performance, it may be possible for most educated viewers to agree that one performance was better than another, but the level of precision that is implied in the system of scoring for the artistic aspects (PE, CH, I), down to the fractions of points, is conceptually inane.

Here's an idea that I'll run up the flagpole (and it's just an idea; I'm not wedded to it and would be interested in hearing responses): what if the artistic components were scored on a kind of "10-point must system" (like boxing)? In other words, forget about whether a 10 is a "perfect" performance in any absolute sense. Instead, a 10 would be the score received by the skater who was, relative to that field, the best of the night. The second best skater would receive some set discount to that, say a 9, and it goes on down the line from there, at predetermined increments (8,7,6...etc.). There could be refinements. If you believe there is more than one skater who were the best of that competition, then you could give them both 10s (but with a strict limit on how many skaters could occupy a particular slot). And, of course, the scale of this grading on a forced curve can be tinkered with. It could start with 30, say, (with some factoring, to give the desired weighting to overall scoring) and the increments can be adjusted, in accordance with how punitive one wants the curve to be.

The advantage of this system, it seems to me, is that it gives everyone in the field a fair chance, but it does not place a burden on judges to think cosmically about how this program compares to a theoretical version of perfection, or how it compared to all the performances that have historically been done. It merely requires that the judge focus on the much narrower and more manageable question of: who was better than who, right here, right now? And simply rank them, which takes the problematic issue of precision out of the judges' hands. The other possible advantage is that it really incentives the skaters to try to achieve a clear differentiation in the artistic qualities of their performance, one that allows them to stand out from the rest.

In a way, I guess this would be a kind of hybrid scoring, one that retains most of the advantages of COP in the technical scoring, while incorporating the elegance and conceptual correctness of 6.0 in its approach to the aesthetic components.
 

deedee1

Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 14, 2007
German "hei da" (literally "hi there") was borrowed into Middle English as "heyda" and later "heyday", which was an archaic exclamation of cheerfulness, excitement and surprise and later reanalyzed as "high day" and adopted the meaning of "prime". Still, the construction of "hei" (hi) + "da" (there) was an ancient concept, literally "Hi, (one who is over) there" with an implication of physical distance, similar to the old nautical expression "Ahoy, there".

"Hello" is quite modern actually, first recorded in the late 19th century.

Thanks again, BC.
Skating, music, other areas on arts, and now linguistics!? :hb:
It seems you are so knowledgeable just on anything!!! :bow:
 

yuki

Final Flight
Joined
Mar 2, 2012
But I think he had timing issue only in the last one minute of his program and he got -1 deduction for that already, also he got -0.79 off, which means that he got only 8.21 on IN.

Chan was in the sixth place in the category of Interpretation. Lower than Takahashi, Hanyu, Amodio, Joubert, and Abbott. Wasn't that low enough already?!

So are you saying that you think he should have gotten 8.21 in IN or that he actually got 8.21? I'm asking because Patrick's actual score for IN in the long program was 9.21, making him not the sixth, but the first in that category.
 

gkelly

Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
-Both by concept as well as by personal observation (whatever that's worth), I believe that there is a right way to do a jump, a spin, change edges, etc., and a wrong way (actually, the wrong ways are endless, and may be the single biggest source of creativity in skating.

I would disagree.
I think that there is a platonic ideal of school figures and those were scored on how closely the execution matched the ideal.

But with freeskating, there's doing the basic thing correctly, and then there are variations that enhance the basic skill or that reflect different ways of doing it right and better than just "right." That's where the positive GOEs come in, or uncaptured mental extra credit under a holistic judgment. If there's only one way to make an element better, then the better-est it could be might be the ideal. But if there are multiple ways to make it better, then the standard good is not the ultimate ideal and neither is only one of the possible improvements.

-With regard to the artistic, my own humble view is that ground for a "right" and "wrong" way can be achieved under at least two approaches. The first possibility is that the audience (including both general spectators and judges) share a fairly uniform set of aesthetic values. ... Of course, the much more diverse nature of modern skating audiences makes this a bit more difficult to achieve, but it has not, in my view, completely erased the phenomenon of value commonality. I would argue that there exists a kind of "skating culture" that cuts across traditional boundaries, which skaters, judges, and knowledgeable viewers all implicitly acknowledge, which dictates, at least in broad strokes, what is to be considered good or bad performance in skating, whether one is American, European, Asian, or whatever.

Yes, very broadly. But there are cultural differences among practitioners and officials as well as among fans. The skating community can try to reinforce common standards within its own boundaries. But the the individuals will also have outside influences. And subcommunities of fans will develop their own common criteria that may draw more on the values of the outside

Just as a random example, some expert and nonexpert viewers might swoon with delight a the sight of a male skater with impeccable body line and pointed toes. Others might feel deeply uneasy at what they perceive as feminine characteristics on a male body, to the point that watching male skaters with these qualities gives them the creeps. (Obviously, they wouldn't last long as officials or coaches if that were the case. But as fans they could continue to enjoy women's skating and the more macho, perhaps less refined male singles and pair skaters.)

That being said, I entirely agree with you that, given the more holistic nature of artistic performance, it may be possible for most educated viewers to agree that one performance was better than another, but the level of precision that is implied in the system of scoring for the artistic aspects (PE, CH, I), down to the fractions of points, is conceptually inane.

The numbers are inevitably a compromise. It's more convenient than giving a verbal evaluation (to communicate) or mental or penciled tickmark (to keep track) of where each skater is good, better, or not so good and by how much.

Here's an idea that I'll run up the flagpole (and it's just an idea; I'm not wedded to it and would be interested in hearing responses): what if the artistic components were scored on a kind of "10-point must system" (like boxing)?

I have no idea what that means and don't have time to google.

In other words, forget about whether a 10 is a "perfect" performance in any absolute sense. Instead, a 10 would be the score received by the skater who was, relative to that field, the best of the night. The second best skater would receive some set discount to that, say a 9, and it goes on down the line from there, at predetermined increments (8,7,6...etc.). There could be refinements. If you believe there is more than one skater who were the best of that competition, then you could give them both 10s (but with a strict limit on how many skaters could occupy a particular slot).

So if there are 30 skaters in the short program, then there should be an average of 3 in each slot? Or can there be slots of 8.5, etc.?
Are these scores given for whole programs or several scores from each judge for different aspects of the program (e.g., 5 separate components)?

Since these are comparative scores, they could only be given after the fact. How do you keep track in large fields?

Here is the best (in the opinion of 5 of the judges, IIRC) men's short program from 1996 Worlds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyGkx7b_Dc0
It was also the 2nd out of 30 performances that day.
What kind of notes do the judges need to keep to remind them to give 3 or 4 hours later that that was the best performance of the day? They can't give the best-in-field score in real time, because for all they knew that could end up being only be the 4th or 5th best performance of the day.

How do they remember that the first skater of the day was, in their opinion, 25th best overall? That's what the placeholder scores were for under 6.0, with some advantages from the flexibility of tiebreakers and some disadvantages in that the numbers corresponded only roughly to absolute skill levels as understood given the state of the sport at that point in skating history.

What the program components scoring is trying to do is to peg the numbers to those somewhat-less-rough mental consensuses about "absolute" skill level rather than comparing them directly to other skaters in the same event.

So I have a few questions about how your proposal would work.
*How many numbers does each judge give to each performance?
*How do they keep track of comparisons among many skaters across the several-hour duration of a large event?

And, of course, the scale of this grading on a forced curve can be tinkered with. It could start with 30, say, (with some factoring, to give the desired weighting to overall scoring) and the increments can be adjusted, in accordance with how punitive one wants the curve to be.

Can you elaborate?

The advantage of this system, it seems to me, is that it gives everyone in the field a fair chance, but it does not place a burden on judges to think cosmically about how this program compares to a theoretical version of perfection, or how it compared to all the performances that have historically been done.

I disagree that there is a theoretical version of perfection. I think there are multiple, potentially contrasting, theoretical versions of excellence. So several different skaters in the same well-skated high-level event might come close, in different ways, to the best imaginable performances of their different programs with their separate areas of excellence. If we want to come up with a winner, there needs to be a way to distinguish at a finer level than either 10 or 9 for the whole program (not sure if that's what you're proposing).

It merely requires that the judge focus on the much narrower and more manageable question of: who was better than who, right here, right now?

See, I think that's actually a much harder question when you have more than 6 skaters to keep track of.

The few very best and very best in the event will be memorable. But how do you distinguish between 10th best and 13th best if they skated several hours apart without some external mental benchmark to compare them to?

And simply rank them, which takes the problematic issue of precision out of the judges' hands. The other possible advantage is that it really incentives the skaters to try to achieve a clear differentiation in the artistic qualities of their performance, one that allows them to stand out from the rest.

Is this proposal for program components/second mark only and there would still be more absolute/cardinal scoring of the elements?
Taking control of the increments (margin of victory) in components away from the judges would mean that the base values would more often determine the results.

Or if you're proposing to use this for technical content too, then it takes away precision in evaluating the tech content.
 
Joined
Aug 16, 2009
Can I say how much I love this thread? Platonism, etymology, examination of the mathematical justification of the scoring system...even Tolstoy.

I actually think that Tolstoy is incorrect about happy families. They can be very different, too...and vive la difference.

Does anyone have any idea of exactly how and by whom the CoP was devised? That would give us a lot of insight into its intention.

Carry on!
 

Dragonlady

Final Flight
Joined
Aug 23, 2003
Does anyone have any idea of exactly how and by whom the CoP was devised? That would give us a lot of insight into its intention.

Carry on!

Octavio Cinquanta devised the system. A group of Canadians actually created the computer program which is used, with input from the technical committees.
 

gkelly

Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
Does anyone have any idea of exactly how and by whom the CoP was devised? That would give us a lot of insight into its intention.

I don't know exactly.
What I have heard is that there was dissatisfaction with the scoring at least as of 1997 and 1998.
(There had always been dissatisfaction, and there had been earlier changes at various points in history, but I think that era is when the move toward something other than ordinals started to gain momentum)

Cinquanta didn't like the place changing in the men's event at 1997 Europeans. So he commissioned a new scoring system that would address that problem. The introduction of OBO instead of majority calculations for dealing with the ordinals, as of 1998-99 season, was the first significant change.

Meanwhile there was a scandal in the ice dance competition at 1998 Olympics, so the dance judges and technical committee were trying to find ways to make that sport more objective and less subject to national bias and deal making. Required elements for ice dance (hello twizzles and dance spins!) were introduced for 1998-99; a fall deduction was introduced immediately after the Olympics and applied at 1998 Worlds.

My understanding was that a project to score elements and what we now call program components was a back-burner project as of 1998 that was moved to the front burner after the 2002 Olympic pair scandal. In an attempt to appease the wrath of the IOC and to satisfy his objective speedskater sensibility, Cinquanta rushed the new system into use with the test project in 2003 senior fall competitions (Nebelhorn and Grand Prix) becoming the new official scoring system by fall of 2004.

I don't know everyone who was who put the new system together. I do know that Ted Barton is the primary name I've heard associated with its development.

Anyone else here know more?

So I think there were several goals in devising and adopting the new system. Primarily to get rid of the confusing place changing and to make the evaluation of technical content more standardized and transparent.

I don't know what the intentions were for the program components other than to keep the values that had already been part of judging the non-element technical content in the first mark and the second mark under the old system. Personally, I like the idea of breaking these qualities down into more than one or two marks, but I don't know what the official reasoning was behind doing so.

Anonymous judging (and random selection, which now thankfully is gone) was also added as of 2002-03, but that's a separate issue. The stated goal there was to interfere with federations' attempt to control their judges' judging and to make deals. Another intention might have been to prevent the public from calling out specific officials for perceived irregularities.
 

Dragonlady

Final Flight
Joined
Aug 23, 2003
I don't know everyone who was who put the new system together. I do know that Ted Barton is the primary name I've heard associated with its development.

Octavio Cinquanta proposed the system to the figure skating federations in the years prior to SLC because he didn't like flip flops and because he wanted to quantify the scoring similarly to the gymnastics scoring system adopted in recent years. They turned the whole thing down flat. After the judging scandal in SLC, Cinquanta again raised the issue of the new scoring system but this time, instead of proposing it to the figure skating federation, he proposed it as "a study, not a rule" to the entire ISU Council, including the speed skaters and the short track speed skaters, so that the figure skating federations couldn't veto it and of course it was passed.

Ted Barton developed the computer program that runs the whole thing, hence the firmly held belief that the Canadians developed the system. They did not. They developed the computer program which runs the system. The judging criteria and the point values were established by the ISU Technical Committees and have been tweaked annually ever since.
 
Top