Technology to Measure Figure Skating: Imagine | Page 3 | Golden Skate

Technology to Measure Figure Skating: Imagine

Joined
Jun 21, 2003
Sure that human judgment is necessary but why should it be the judgment of a handful of individuals? If I get it right, the artistry means being creative, entertaining, touching and capable to appeal to us general public. The often conservative taste of judges doesn’t support it at all. Why don’t we leave it to the common sense and taste of skaters? Despite that they wouldn’t be rewarded for that in terms of medals, they know very well that they can be rewarded in terms of show ticket sales if they prove that they can be also great artists.

I think there is a problem here. There aren’t any ice shows any more, to speak of. For the few that remain, what draws audiences is not how artistic they hope the skaters will turn out to be, but “Is there a headliner with an Olympic gold medal?”

In the good old days, in the United States anyway, there were Las Vegas type reviews like Ice Follies and Ice Capades. These were popular and lucrative (at least for the owners). Skaters’ motivation for trying to win some kind of amateur title was strictly the hope of getting a spot in the chorus line.
 

usethis2

Medalist
Joined
Feb 11, 2014
@Vanshilar: You exampled many possibilities which I find all sound and encouraging. As for detecting the number of rotations, visual inspection may be enough as long as take-off and landing angles are automatically determined by machines. (it's easy to tell double and triple jumps apart) I also agree that the cost may not be the biggest hurdle due to bureaucracy and power involved. There is also a slight chance that audience may not agree with machine's readings if a skater excel at cheating, but with large screens and realtime slow-mo videos that can be overcome.
 

Anna K.

Final Flight
Joined
Feb 22, 2014
Country
Latvia
Anna, your idea is akin to the pro-skating competitions in the 90s, i.e. World Professional Championships. I'm not adverse to it but it will be radical to promote a sport without specific numbers at the Olympics. Would be it Olympic-sanctioned? I don't know. I'm sure some of the sleuths on this forum will find out.
Well, we see many sports and/or disciplines that become Olympic-sanctioned after they become popular with the public. So the success goes first.
Furthermore, you still have to find a way to make it figure skating and not speed/spin/jump-skating.
I think that still having a piece of music to interpret is THE way. Plus, machine-tested synchronism would also add to technical difficulty, like playing piano with a metronome.
I think there is a problem here. There aren’t any ice shows any more, to speak of. For the few that remain, what draws audiences is not how artistic they hope the skaters will turn out to be, but “Is there a headliner with an Olympic gold medal?”
In the good old days, in the United States anyway, there were Las Vegas type reviews like Ice Follies and Ice Capades. These were popular and lucrative (at least for the owners). Skaters’ motivation for trying to win some kind of amateur title was strictly the hope of getting a spot in the chorus line.
However, we want the ice shows back; or, at least sold-out sports events - don’t we?
I think what is really necessary is a brand new concept of figure skating, like, “modern” skating instead of “classic” format that we have. Claims like the use of advanced technologies, honest and high-level sports competition, and full artistic freedom in contemporary music and style choice might get the attention that figure skating needs so bad.
As the events would be “only sport”, then naturally shows should follow where skaters would show wholly their artistic side :)
 

usethis2

Medalist
Joined
Feb 11, 2014
Someone has mentioned it earlier (sorry I forgot and I am on mobile) that if figure skating wants to truly be more a sport than a presentation, then it should throw away the pretense of the latter because it wastes everyone's time and life. Why would anyone create new program under such a system? Just keep using one program with the same music (or without) for the entire career and you are set. No reason to learn new music/choreo, let alone perfecting one. This is a serious proposition. We should not cheat on athletes' lives.
 

CanadianSkaterGuy

Record Breaker
Joined
Jan 25, 2013
Artistic skaters do not continually get high marks no matter how poorly they perform. They get high marks when they perform well.

Explain Takahashi getting the #3 and #2 PCS marks in the Olympics and the #12 and #13 TES marks. At Worlds he got the #2 and #4 PCS marks and #6 and #13 TES scores. Plushenko at Russian nationals got the best PCS and 95 points at that, when he obviously had terrible TES marks. The Germans ended up getting high PCS marks after their 2013 Worlds FS to hold onto silver, Chan ended up getting high PCS marks with his 2013 Worlds FS to hold off Ten, Kostner was 2nd thanks to PCS after the fall in her 2013 Worlds SP over a clean Murakami and Osmond. Even Lipnitskaia with only 3 triples in her CoR FS was given sufficient PCS - a personal best! - so that she would still win over Kostner. Same with B/S getting higher PCS than W/P in spite of a fall. Asada was given sufficient PCS to defeat a much superior Suzuki at 4CC 2012.

The point being, PCS marks are a "safety net" for artistic/popular/home ice skaters, and it's appalling that skaters who are skating much cleaner and with greater difficulty are still be held back and held behind. It's so incredibly silly that skaters like Kim/Asada/Chan/Hanyu/Kostner have a 15-point PCS advantage over some skaters -- the equivalent of 4 triples (and even if a popular skater bombs, their PCS advantage becomes 10 points, so like 2 triples)... and there's nothing that most skaters can do about it, no matter how much they might improve or how clean they skate.
 

Anna K.

Final Flight
Joined
Feb 22, 2014
Country
Latvia
Someone has mentioned it earlier (sorry I forgot and I am on mobile) that if figure skating wants to truly be more a sport than a presentation, then it should throw away the pretense of the latter because it wastes everyone's time and life. Why would anyone create new program under such a system? Just keep using one program with the same music (or without) for the entire career and you are set. No reason to learn new music/choreo, let alone perfecting one. This is a serious proposition. We should not cheat on athletes' lives.

You brought up an awfully interesting point!
Given that I’m fantasizing about a new format (there are others who discuss the improvement of existing system by means of technology on this thread), that’s what I thought: what if the solution would be exactly the opposite? Imagine that skaters have their strongly technical routines and music is there basically to test their timing: why shouldn’t they skate the same routines to different pieces of music each time then, so testing also the flexibility of their timing? Plus those random pieces could be chosen by computer right before the competition. The skaters might be just given the overall theme to prepare their costumes :)

I like this idea!
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
Explain Takahashi getting the #3 and #2 PCS marks in the Olympics and the #12 and #13 TES marks. At Worlds he got the #2 and #4 PCS marks and #6 and #13 TES scores. Plushenko at Russian nationals got the best PCS and 95 points at that, when he obviously had terrible TES marks….

? If a skater does a lot of hard triple jumps he gets high TES scores. If he interprets the music well, displays interesting and effective choreography, and (as the rule book puts it) "generates energy that establishes an invisible connection with the audience" ;) then he deserves high scores in Interpretation, Choreography, and Presentation, respectively. This does not seem controversial to me. If he does a lot of Transitions, with variation and high quality, then he gets a good score in Transitions.

In the best of all possible worlds, the winning skater would be the one who does the best on both sides. Sometimes this doesn't happen. :cry: If no one lands a bunch of hard jumps AND presents something of value on the performing arts side, then the judges have their work cut out for them. If this NEVER happens, then figure skating will disappear as a spectator sport (and deserve to, IMHO).
 
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Joined
Jun 21, 2003
Anna K said:
Why shouldn’t they skate the same routines to different pieces of music each time then, so testing also the flexibility of their timing? Plus those random pieces could be chosen by computer right before the competition. The skaters might be just given the overall theme to prepare their costumes.

They do! Michelle Kwan :love: :love: :love: skated the same long program from 2000 to 2005, picking up three world championships along the way. If it's not broke, don't fix it. :yes:

In the U.S. there used to be a pro competition like that, called "Improv-Ice." The skaters got their music a half hour before the show. Surya Bonaly had an advantage because she traveled with a big trunk full of costumes, so she would be sure to have one to fit any occasion. :clap:
 
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Vanshilar

On the Ice
Joined
Feb 24, 2014
Depends if this sport is going to be pure sport, or it is still going to be half artistry (I hope for the latter).

If it is pure sport, then yes. Speed, Height, Distance, Trajectory, power, centering, coverage etc in performance should be measured and accounted for with raw data to support human judgement. They should be used as reference points since your speed, power at various part of your program MUST and SHOULD reflect upon the music and choreography intentions. A skater is likely to skate slow during slow sections, fast and sharp under more exciting sections etc.

However as long as the sport has artistry involved, human judgement are absolutely necessary, but it will need to be a transparent process. Ideally the judges need to have an established carefully guarded and respected reputation that is trusted by the general public and skaters, and they need to be able to explained via qualitative terms with proper expert opinon not just via numbers.

Lots of good points there. However, regarding the numbers, I think it's important to also keep in mind the purpose of the technology or any other measurement method.

Ultimately at the end of the day it's about how to rank skaters. For whatever psychological reason, people want to see that (i.e. who was "best" or 1st place, 2nd place, etc.). Scores are the means rank the skaters. So the discussion is really about, what is the best (or at least, what is a better) way to do the scoring to rank the skaters. As mentioned already technology is one way but it's not the only way and it can't measure everything (i.e. things like artistry). However, even with technology, there's something else that has to be done by humans: the scoring. What I mean is that technology can at most only measure a quantity. It cannot provide value (i.e. score). At most the technology will be able to say for example "during that jump the skate was -83 degrees away from three full rotations." It is up to the humans, i.e. the experts, to say "well then it should be worth X points." Sure, once there's a measured quantity, then the computer can calculate a score based on that quantity, but how to calculate the score -- the relationship between the measured quantity and the value in points -- is still given by a human, i.e. expert.

The advantage of using technology is to reduce the error in human judgment about those measured quantities -- rotations, edges, and so forth. It cannot replace human judgment about what's valuable and what's not. This thus increases the transparency of the process. Under the current system, far as I know, wrong edges and such are called by the technical panel. Although we know their guidance via the rule book, their deliberations are opaque to us (we don't know the specific reasons for why a wrong edge was or wasn't called). Thus the process is not only prone to human error, but it's also prone to influence (i.e. politics/corruption/bias), and we are unable to distinguish between the two. By having technology make the measurements, the process reduces that problem -- we could have something like "that jump was -103 +- 2 degrees away from a full 3 rotations". Presumably the technology is better than the human eye at making those measurements (otherwise it's not useful) -- hence using it where appropriate would increase the reputation of the judging process. The expert opinion then would be on how difficult each move was (i.e. how many points it would get) -- backed up by the actual numbers to ensure that human error, bias, politics etc. wasn't introduced to unfairly skew the results.

Sure that human judgment is necessary but why should it be the judgment of a handful of individuals? If I get it right, the artistry means being creative, entertaining, touching and capable to appeal to us general public. The often conservative taste of judges doesn’t support it at all. Why don’t we leave it to the common sense and taste of skaters? Despite that they wouldn’t be rewarded for that in terms of medals, they know very well that they can be rewarded in terms of show ticket sales if they prove that they can be also great artists.

I don't think potential ticket sales is necessarily a good way to rank skaters. In the (classical) piano world, Lang Lang is by far the biggest moneymaker. But many pianists have serious reservations about what he's actually contributing to the field compared with current pianists such as Hamelin, Tsujii, or perhaps Yundi Li. He's certainly talented, but in classical music he's known more for his facial and physical antics (and good enough technique to play the right notes while doing them) rather than breaking new ground in expressiveness, artistry, conveying emotion, musicality, etc. The sad reality is that for many classical pianists, if money was the primary metric, then they should just play background music for voice shows like American Idol and forget about classical music.

To a certain extent, yes, any endeavor needs to consider whether or not it's able to bring in money, for survival if nothing else. But I don't think the ability to get money is necessarily the same as quality.

I♥Yuna;885480 said:
That tech exists today, it's used in smartphones (to determine whether you're holding it vertically or horizontally) an could be refined and applied to a skating boot w/wireless communication to the tech panel's computer.

I think the main problem would be developing all of this tech (time it would take to break out of experimental stage and the cost to actually implement it) and glitches, like the boot sensor failing to record data, or failing to transmit it (where does that leave the tech panel? how to score fairly in the event of a serious glitch?).

Although the technology is available in a smartphone, I don't know if it's robust enough to work inside of a skate, which is subject to quite a few big shocks. I also don't know if skates are the best place for the technology, since it is in the skater's possession and thus more easily tampered with. I'd lean more toward an external solution such as cameras with image-recognition and measurement software. Although this would cost money, I'm not sure it would be all that much. After all, cameras are already in use at a lot of places, especially for more high-profile events. Just consider the cameras that the technical panel has (actually, I don't know how many they use). So it's not a matter of going out and getting new hardware.

The main difficulty is in the software. There's a fair shot I could write it myself if I had the time (I have some background in image processing and wrote an optical character recognition program to analyze a game before). The video analysis I would think is fairly straightforward; edge detection to identify the skate location in the image, then some processing knowing the location and some other parameters of the camera(s) to calculate the skate's location in space. Probably even easier if the camera can resolve the ice, for example the figure that the skate is leaving behind as it moves, as a reference point. That would be a hardware requirement on the camera though, and also somewhat a software requirement on the video quality (for example, it likely couldn't do this on videos from Youtube since they're heavily compressed). Then it's just a matter of doing this for multiple frames and eventually you can work out the skate's location in space over time, and thus calculate the relevant quantities (such as edge and rotation). It seems like an undergrad project, and once completed, it could of course be copied to wherever it's needed. Maybe I'm understating the difficulty of this, but I don't particularly see where there might be major problems.

If the system doesn't work because of a breakdown or whatever, then you just revert back to how it's done now -- humans eyeballing it from replays. The system is meant to be an improvement, not the only way that's allowable. I would hope that even if the system is in place then the judges are still competent enough to be able to judge events if needed, just that the system would provide for more accuracy (and reduce judge workload) when available.

Also, although the system would have a cost, so does the current system of judges. Devoting manpower to measuring objective quantities has a cost in itself, not necessarily in terms of money (the judges don't get paid for it, right?) but in terms of the judges you need to have available, their own transportation etc. costs, and the opportunity cost of them not being able to do something else. The business case then is a tradeoff in paying a one-time cost of getting the software written (perhaps licensing fees if it's outsourced) and possibly making sure the right camera equipment is available, compared with the expenses for the manpower involved in manually measuring the quantities with judges, as well as the potential error and bias issues (i.e. legitimacy issues) with using humans as the measuring sticks. I don't think it's that unreasonable. Again though, it comes down to whether or not the organizers would actually be willing to relinquish the influence that they have over the outcome of competitive events. As I said above, the potential for human error is one way to cover up bias, corruption, etc.

@Vanshilar: You exampled many possibilities which I find all sound and encouraging. As for detecting the number of rotations, visual inspection may be enough as long as take-off and landing angles are automatically determined by machines. (it's easy to tell double and triple jumps apart) I also agree that the cost may not be the biggest hurdle due to bureaucracy and power involved. There is also a slight chance that audience may not agree with machine's readings if a skater excel at cheating, but with large screens and realtime slow-mo videos that can be overcome.

I'm sure there may be ways to cheat the system. The software's acceptance will depend on its reputation as being able to accurately and neutrally evaluate different skaters. Coincidentally or not, judges have the same issues -- with human factors thrown in.

Someone has mentioned it earlier (sorry I forgot and I am on mobile) that if figure skating wants to truly be more a sport than a presentation, then it should throw away the pretense of the latter because it wastes everyone's time and life. Why would anyone create new program under such a system? Just keep using one program with the same music (or without) for the entire career and you are set. No reason to learn new music/choreo, let alone perfecting one. This is a serious proposition. We should not cheat on athletes' lives.

I wouldn't say so. I'm not a figure skating expert but I would say it's more of an art form. The technique should be used to convey something, rather than being the end in and of itself, just like with any art. Take painting for example: pointillism (where the painting was made up of lots of little dots) was exciting not only because it was a new technique, but because it was able to convey a different visual effect than previous painting techniques. (Incidentally, it foreshadowed the technological use of pixels many decades later.) In piano playing, playing scales is a technique that everyone learns, but no one other than the pianist's parents will want to hear them play scales. But playing scales quickly does have its place as part of a piece in adding to the excitement; take for example, Hamelin's playing of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIMzL2-4bjg at around 7:45; that's 21 evenly-spaced notes in 1 second each run that you're seeing/hearing, or a new note every 0.05 seconds) where scales are used as part of the "exciting" section of the piece. As someone elsewhere mentioned, if figure skating were just about the jumps, then it just needs to be a 10-second thing of the skater doing a jump. The choreography and artistry is what ties everything together and weaves a bigger story with more emotional impact than just the technical elements.
 

Anna K.

Final Flight
Joined
Feb 22, 2014
Country
Latvia
I don't think potential ticket sales is necessarily a good way to rank skaters. In the (classical) piano world, Lang Lang is by far the biggest moneymaker. But many pianists have serious reservations about what he's actually contributing to the field compared with current pianists such as Hamelin, Tsujii, or perhaps Yundi Li. He's certainly talented, but in classical music he's known more for his facial and physical antics (and good enough technique to play the right notes while doing them) rather than breaking new ground in expressiveness, artistry, conveying emotion, musicality, etc. The sad reality is that for many classical pianists, if money was the primary metric, then they should just play background music for voice shows like American Idol and forget about classical music.

To a certain extent, yes, any endeavor needs to consider whether or not it's able to bring in money, for survival if nothing else. But I don't think the ability to get money is necessarily the same as quality.

It depends if we're talking about individual success or the development of the branch. For an individual, doing eveything to increase ticket sales might well be destructive because it may lead to the decline of personal performance level. For the branch, it can't develop without attracting more money and investing it in the quantity and quality of events. Or, can it?
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
^ The argument about money seems to be between the people who long for the good old days when a tip-top skater could become a millionaire, and the "realists" who are content for the sport to settle into its natural niche as mainly a participatory sport. Is it a sport for the athletes and their families or for the spectators?
 

Anna K.

Final Flight
Joined
Feb 22, 2014
Country
Latvia
^ The argument about money seems to be between the people who long for the good old days when a tip-top skater could become a millionaire, and the "realists" who are content for the sport to settle into its natural niche as mainly a participatory sport. Is it a sport for the athletes and their families or for the spectators?

Uhm... Who of them are supposed to be "realists"? :p

For me, it's simple. Projects that don't bring the money in pump the money out. I'm talking about a new project so it goes without saying that it has to bring the money in. Or, I have to be an eccentric billionaire :laugh:

P.S. I have a suspicion that they in IOC have thought about it too and are getting rid of participatory sports bit by bit...
 

Anna K.

Final Flight
Joined
Feb 22, 2014
Country
Latvia
Sorry I didn’t answer this post earlier!

As risk of sounding like a total luddite, I think there actually should be LESS technology at the judging booth, not more. I feel that replays and other judging tools have given judges (well, the technical panel) way too much power.

I love technology and feel it has a role in skating (namely in improving skaters during practice), but think judging should be done more in real time.

It’s so much better than a Luddite post because you hit the point – two points! – by stating where technology in FS stands today.
FS is a sport with a history and I believe that many on this forum wouldn’t mind to travel back in time to enjoy it. However, here goes why I think the days of real time judging are over and it’s basically the question about how many pains it will take to admit it.
Corruption and other aspects that are not related to sport aside, every sport is a physical activity; hence in every sport there are borders of what a man/woman can physically do. It takes some period of time until these borders are reached. Till then, the sport develops rapidly but when it’s there it’s only about a detail, a hundredth of a second, that decides the victory and results of top athletes are very close. Please correct me if you think that FS isn’t there – because I sincerely think it is - and for FS it means tons of details that can influence of decide the outcome.

In fact, it was because of one of forum members admitting it in a different thread:
There are too many details for one person to see in real time, which is why one member of the technical panel takes responsibility for counting the different kinds of steps and turns and the other members will count the rotations in each direction, the upper body movement, and/or the combinations of difficult turns.
that actually inspired me to start this discussion. FS is crying for technological aids; however, the discussion what technologies and to what degree should be involved is obviously still open. I’d say that the use of video replays has many imperfections and I’d vote for more radical technology involvement.

To be fair to gkelly, here is the post in another thread where she explains the abovementioned post and her real opinion about technology:

Just to clarify, what I meant was that it is impossible for an untrained eye, even someone who knows what all the turns are but hasn't spent years doing them herself, to identify all the turns by name in real time. The specialists can do it.
Also, it's not possible for one person to count the turns and simultaneously also count the amount of time spent turning both directions and doing upper body movement (especially in pairs when there are two sets of feet to watch). That's why the panel splits the duties.
The judges have a different job -- to evaluate the quality of the step sequences, including how well they go with the music. They'll notice more or less how difficult the steps are, but it's not their job to determine the level.

[…] Sensors in the skates -- especially if they could be attached to skates during competitions and removed for practice -- would be more feasible, more affordable, than putting sensors in the ice. I'll leave it to engineers to figure out the details, but it wouldn't surprise me if someday there could be sensors that identify steps and turns, and also jumps including takeoff edges and amount of rotation, and also number of revolutions and speed and centering in spins.
You might need only one official whose job is more like the data entry operator now to make sure the data coming from the sensors is properly translated to the computer through the correct rules for what's allowed in each kind of program, what adds points in each kind of element.
So essentially this would replace the current technical panel, and maybe add some information about quality, Skating Skills, Transitions, that is currently evaluated by judges.

[Regarding the synchronism checked by a machine] Maybe [it might check] timing for the pattern dance part of the short dance, or other such compulsory sequences, if those still exist by whatever decade such technology would be ready for adoption.
Essentially, removing subjective judgment from the scoring would mean that pretty much nothing that is currently evaluated under Performance/Execution, Choreography, or Interpretation would have any value in determining the results.

I don't think upper body sensors would be able to determine the beauty or "clarity" of a position, and certainly not whether there is any emotional connection, or whether the skating matches the music, etc.
So there would be no reason for skaters to work on those areas.
The results would be much more objective and indisputable, as long as we trust the technology. But would audiences be interested in the kinds of skating that would result?

I’d say that every novelty, including technology innovation, causes the interest of the public. So, if the use of technology is inevitable, then why not to make an advantage of it and let it draw the modern profile of FS?
 

Vanshilar

On the Ice
Joined
Feb 24, 2014
By the way, other than technological innovations on the sport itself, another aspect to consider is how the judging is done. There are likely software improvements that could be done under the current system. For example, under the current system, the GOEs are supposed to be based on a well-defined set of criteria, such as height, unexpected entry, etc. If this is the case, what if for each element, the judges input which ones they observed? Then the software automatically counts up the number of observed criteria and calculates the GOEs based on them. Then it would be more transparent as to what criteria the judges specifically used in their scoring, even if the judging were still anonymous (i.e. no changes to the rules of the current system). Otherwise under the current way of reporting the judging results, it's still a bunch of opaque numbers that don't provide much meaningful feedback as to where a skater could improve, not to mention allow for a lot of politicking.
 

usethis2

Medalist
Joined
Feb 11, 2014
For example, under the current system, the GOEs are supposed to be based on a well-defined set of criteria, such as height, unexpected entry, etc. If this is the case, what if for each element, the judges input which ones they observed? Then the software automatically counts up the number of observed criteria and calculates the GOEs based on them. Then it would be more transparent as to what criteria the judges specifically used in their scoring, even if the judging were still anonymous (i.e. no changes to the rules of the current system).

Well, I have one better. Sometime in the future computers should be able to recognize every human move relative to the surroundings hence they will automatically output GOEs according to set criteria. We have facial recognition and retina recognition today. It will require some serious CPU/GPU power and serious programming but one can dream. (Sadly even that system will leave PCS to the judges. :laugh:)
 

Anna K.

Final Flight
Joined
Feb 22, 2014
Country
Latvia
Well, I have one better. Sometime in the future computers should be able to recognize every human move relative to the surroundings hence they will automatically output GOEs according to set criteria. We have facial recognition and retina recognition today. It will require some serious CPU/GPU power and serious programming but one can dream. (Sadly even that system will leave PCS to the judges. :laugh:)

To be precise, technology already is able to recognize every move according to the set criteria, like, facial recognition.
And, such system would leave only part of PCS to judges. Let’s see the criteria that exist under CoP and give a yes to what can be done by a machine and no to what can’t:


Skating Skills(SS)
* Balance - yes, rhythmic knee action – yes, and precision of foot placement -yes
* Flow – yes, and effortless glide – no, it’s subjective what’s effortless
* Cleanness and sureness of deep edges, steps and turns - yes
* Power/energy and acceleration - yes
* Mastery of multi directional skating - yes
* Mastery of one foot skating - yes


Transitions(TR)
* Variety - yes
* Difficulty - yes
* Intricacy – yes, if comparison with programs of other skater counts; no, if intricacy is subjective or undefined
* Quality – no, it’s undefined what’s quality; in case it’s defined - yes

Performance(PE)
* Physical, emotional and intellectual involvement – no, it’s subjective
* Carriage - yes
* Style and individuality/personality – no, it’s subjective
* Clarity of movement – no, it’s undefined; in case it’s defined - yes
* Variety and contrast - yes
* Projection – no, it’s undefined; in case it’s defined - yes


Choreography(CH)
* Purpose (idea, concept, vision, mood) – no, it’s subjective
* Proportion (equal weight of parts) - yes
* Unity (purposeful threading of all movements) – purposeful no, threading yes
* Utilization of personal and public space – no, it’s undefined; in case it’s defined - yes
* Pattern and ice coverage - yes
* Phrasing and form (movements and parts structured to match the phrasing of the music) - yes
* Originality of purpose, movement and design – yes, if comparison with programs of other skater counts; no, if originality is subjective or undefined


Interpretation(IN)
* Effortless movement in time to the music (timing) - timing yes, effortlessness no
* Expression of the music's style, character - yes, if comparison with programs of other skater counts; no, if originality is subjective or undefined, and rhythm - yes
* Use of finesse to reflect the nuances of the music – yes

Except a half-point of SS, two points of five in PE, one-and-a-half point of CH, and a half-point of IN everything else are yes or possible yes. Think about it! :)
 

gkelly

Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
Could such recognition programs measure these qualities on a scale of 0-10 (with decimal increments), if the qualities are properly defined?

For the No answers that you've put in blue (except maybe "effortlessness"), and also Originality and Expression of the music's style, character, those tend to be the aspects that casual fans are most interested in, the least technical areas and the ones that make skaters stand out as individuals with individual personalities. And of course hardcore fans love those aspects as well, although fans of specific skaters tend to be heavily biased.

Should those qualities be removed from the scoring entirely so there would be no more judges, and individuality and charisma would become irrelevant to who wins?
Let judges address only the subjective aspects? They'd have less to do, so they could do it better? Although it would all be subjective.
Let fans vote on those aspects, turning those parts of the scoring into a popularity contest, but often overridden by all the machine-measurable objective aspects?
 

Anna K.

Final Flight
Joined
Feb 22, 2014
Country
Latvia
gkelly -
- of course, a program could award points but should it? It’s also possible that the rank 1 in category A and 5 in category B could make rank 3 in total. Imagine that you have complete data about a just skated program with its every nuance: it would be much easier and more objective to rank skaters according the data. A computer could compare the line left by footwork of one skater to that of another, or put silhouette on silhouette. It would be also an interesting material to view if available on the internet.

I honestly think that skaters would have more creative freedom if their artistry wasn’t predetermined by judges and I also believe that a technology judged competition could exist without the subjective part of judging. However, that might depend on the discipline. If it’s about the deliverance and development of a certain style that doesn’t prescribe much freedom anyway, then the judgment of style experts might be applicable. Like you said, judges might have less to do and so they might do it better. Instead of nine anonymous judges there might be three or four personalized judges who would be given an opportunity to express and defend their opinion. It would be still subjective but it would be transparent.
Plus, technical knowledge won’t be necessary to be a judge so celebrity judges might be invited for commercial or less serious events.

The fan involvement is another aspect that is possible because of development of other kind of technologies, the media. Of course, a sports competition is not a popularity contest but the Gala could be: why not to invite to the Gala only those athletes who prove to be popular according to an internet vote? I think that would make a sense.
 
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