US Team: 4CCs and Worlds (updated)

[ice coverage]

You could always add +2 (value of choreo stsq) to give Vincent's jgp scores a senior benchmark. Or use what he score on ChSq at Bavarian open.  Not statistically pure but something to work with.

Vincent also did not have the opportunity to attempt a quad in his junior SPs.

---

As a Jason fan who is fine with Jason going to Worlds, I am finding  it hard to reconcile what is perceived as fair/reasonable or unfair/unreasonable over the course of the thread.

In posts from those hung up on TES minimums, some are insistent that it does matter that Vincent did not have the TES minimums in hand before Nats, and ... they cut him absolutely no slack for being injured at the comp in Dec where he otherwise would have been quite likely to get the minimums.

And yet in discussion of Jason's scores for this season, some posts have the POV that it is reasonable to disregard Jason's NHK score b/c he was injured.

So ... not surprisingly, people have varying opinions as to how to give each skater a fair shake within this thread.
(To be clear: I am not saying that the USFS decision was unfair.)

 

[Mrs. P]

Vincent also did not have the opportunity to attempt a quad in his junior SPs.

---

As a Jason fan who is fine with Jason going to Worlds, I am finding  it hard to reconcile what is perceived as fair/reasonable or unfair/unreasonable over the course of the thread.

In posts from those hung up on TES minimums, some are insistent that it does matter that Vincent did not have the TES minimums in hand before Nats, and ... they cut him absolutely no slack for being injured at the comp in Dec where he otherwise would have been quite likely to get the minimums.

And yet in discussion of Jason's scores for this season, some posts have the POV that it is reasonable to disregard Jason's NHK score b/c he was injured.

So ... not surprisingly, people have varying opinions as to how to give each skater a fair shake within this thread.
(To be clear: I am not saying that the USFS decision was unfair.)

That's a good point. His JGP scores certainly would be tempered by that fact (i.e. the quad is not allowed in the short program at the junior men level).

FWIW, I never though the TES minimums were even a factor nor do I hold it against Vincent that he had to W/D from his senior B.

The NHK score is there, it's in the record books, so you can't disregard it completely, however you could argue that it's a notable outlier as far as standard deviations go.

I think both skaters have been tar/feathered and overly protected/defended/given the benefit of the doubt, so from that stance, this thread is fair.

 

[ice coverage]

... FWIW, I never though the TES minimums were even a factor nor do I hold it against Vincent that he had to W/D from his senior B. ...

Yes, you and I have  been in agreement all along on these points. :agree:
Was not attaching you to the opinions to the contrary.

... I think both skaters have been tar/feathered and overly protected/defended/given the benefit of the doubt, so from that stance, this thread is fair.

And in general, I agree with your overall assessment.
Although the differing viewpoints on injury (within the thread as a whole -- not talking about your individual viewpoints, Mrs. P) make me scratch my head.

For me, a good  outcome from this thread is that I realized that I care about both Jason and Vincent so much that I even refreshed my memory as to the formula for calculating  standard deviations -- with you and Tahuu as my inspirations. #MyLastMathClassEvenBefore2000 #ThanksForCrunchingTheNumbers

 

[TontoK]

I think both skaters have been tar/feathered and overly protected/defended/given the benefit of the doubt, so from that stance, this thread is fair.

LOL. I agree. The discussion has been free-wheeling, but that's what a discussion board is all about.

I think GS would be a boring place if we all agreed on every single issue. Part of the fun is arguing the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin.

So long as it's not a Fan Fest thread, I think people should continue to bash away and defend to the death.

 

[concorde]

If Vincent wanted a qualifying score, he should have skated in more Senior B's and fewer JGP's.

I thought it was the USFS, not the individual skater that decided who got sent to each Senior B.

 

[chuckm]

Go look up the JGP protocols: Vincent landed at least one quad in each of his freeskates. Quads are not allowed in the SP in the JGP, however.

Vincent was assigned to two JGP events. He was assigned to one Challenge event, but withdrew due to a minor injury; he was then assigned to the Bavarian Open.

Skaters have little or no say as to what events they are assigned.

 

[el henry]

Mean+/-SD indicates Jason a ~242+/-12 skater. You don't need to be sorry if mean+/-SD is not apparent from the raw data.

Means and Standard Deviations applied to one skater???? How is that even done? Plus, I see no evidence of regression analysis or any true SD analysis. Have you prepared a regression analysis for Jason compared to other men's skaters? (Full disclosure: I am not a mathematician. I have however litigated several class action discrimination suits that are almost always predicated on regression analysis/SDs. So my standards would be the ones we would need to have met to prove discrimination. I know just enough to be dangerous.)

But more importantly, the answer to @Tavi's first question: "What "Team" said "who can beat that"? What are you even talking about?" remains unanswered. I have followed Jason's career rather closely since 2014 and I have never seen his team say anything remotely like that. Nor have I seen any poster say anything like that. Do you have any citations?

 

[FlattFan]

In other words, it's okay to cherry pick data to make the numbers say exactly what you want them to?

If you're a statistician, you should be honest enough to admit that one score for Vincent is virtually meaningless as a predictor of his future scoring. One of the reasons Vincent's junior scores are so low is that he regularly under rotated jumps over a two year period. Based on his Bavarian Open performance, he hasn't fixed that problem, so quite frankly, it's pretty easy to guess that trend will continue he as a senior, no matter how high his BV is

But if Vincent's junior scores aren't comparable, please explain how the average you calculated for Jason going back to 2013 is meaningful and predictive of his future scoring when (1) he's not the same skater in 2016/17 that he was in 2013 or 2014 or 2015, (2) scoring has inflated a lot in the past season, (3) you included at least three competitions in 2015 (Ice Challenge) 2016 (NHK) and 2017 (4CC) where he was injured or recovering from injury, and (4) you don't know where he is in his injury recovery right now or where he will be at Worlds. That's leaving aside the fact that his score at Cup Russia 2015 could be considered an outlier due to the death of his manager.

The point I was making in my last post is that this season alone, Jason's scores at 3 of the 5 competitions you included were outside the range of 242+12. I would suggest that for all of the above reasons, your numbers aren't much use for predicting Jason's scoring potential at Worlds and beyond.

Jesus. It's not cherry picking to point out a current injury causing the score to be lower. It's a current injury.
Even if Hanyu had been scoring 300 points and then broke his legs and got low 200 in the last few comps, that's what he's going to get. What is cherry picking about that? Do you have a problem?

 

[ice coverage]

Means and Standard Deviations applied to one skater????  How is that even done? ...

Like so:

https://www.khanacademy.org/math/pr...a/calculating-standard-deviation-step-by-step​

Unless I completely misunderstood the meaning of your questions.

... Plus, I see no evidence of regression analysis or any true SD analysis. Have you prepared a regression analysis for Jason compared to other men's skaters? (Full disclosure: I am not a mathematician. I have however litigated several class action discrimination suits that are almost always predicated on regression analysis/SDs. So my standards would be the ones we would need to have met to prove discrimination. I know just enough to be dangerous.) ...

I am not a mathematician either, but if you want a regression analysis, what variable is it that you would want to be correlated with total scores???  And why that variable??  And how would such a correlation potentially "prove" "discrimination"??

 

[Tavi...]

Jesus. It's not cherry picking to point out a current injury causing the score to be lower. It's a current injury.
Even if Hanyu had been scoring 300 points and then broke his legs and got low 200 in the last few comps, that's what he's going to get. What is cherry picking about that? Do you have a problem?

No I don't have a problem, thanks.

It's cherry picking to pull one set of data to make Jason look worse than he otherwise would and to exclude a host of data in order to make Vincent look better. Tahuu went back to 2013 in an apparent attempt to show that Jason has a mediocre 242 scoring average that is somehow relevant to what he will score st Worlds or even next season. For the reasons I outlined above, IMO that average is pretty meaningless. It's also cherry picking to categorically exclude all of Vincent's JGP results as not comparable and imply that his Bavarian Open score alone is a valid predictor of anything. Given that he's competing next at Junior Worlds, in fact, it's his junior scores that are relevant, not his one score as a senior.

Hope that helps.

 

[snowflake]

Many people have said that the decision for the men's team selection should have been postponed until after the Bavarian Open to be fairer. Why the Bavarian Open? Why not 4CC? To make sure that Vincent is on the team. That is fair to who, Vincent? Igoring the fact that they cannot make that decision mid-season, if they did, the belief that that would be the fairest choice is a fallacy. That would be the opposite of fair.

Delaying the selection of the team in an utterly unprecedented move for one new senior skater when he had the season to get the required minimums would be unfair to Nathan, Jason, and Vincent. If you delay the whole team selection for all disciplines you are being unfair to all the competitors involved.

They were at the same time 14-19 February.

I am among those who thouhgt US fed should have waited. But the results from Bavarian/4CC didn't make it clearer: Jason better on PCS and Vincent better on tech, more or less the same results. I’m pretty sure US fed picked Jason early as a safe bet, giving him lots of time to prepare for worlds.

Anyways, Jason and Vincent

 

[Mrs. P]

No I don't have a problem, thanks.

It's cherry picking to pull one set of data to make Jason look worse than he otherwise would and to exclude a host of data in order to make Vincent look better. Tahuu went back to 2013 in an apparent attempt to show that Jason has a mediocre 242 scoring average that is somehow relevant to what he will score st Worlds or even next season. For the reasons I outlined above, IMO that average is pretty meaningless. It's also cherry picking to categorically exclude all of Vincent's JGP results as not comparable and imply that his Bavarian Open score alone is a valid predictor of anything. Given that he's competing next at Junior Worlds, in fact, it's his junior scores that are relevant, not his one score as a senior.

Hope that helps.

Honestly, I didn't think Jason came off THAT bad from the exercise and to be fair to Tahuu -- he (she?) pointed out that it would be reasonable to use the season-only (with -NHK out) mean/deviation. But even the career-long deviation actually, for me affirmed Jason's relative consistency. I'm sure if you did the exercise with a far less consistent skater -- Michael Brezina or Denis Ten -- that SD would be way crazier.

Even the career-long deviation, considering all the notable outliers, shows that even a worse case scenario wouldn't be a total meltdown, so he's a reasonable safe bet for Worlds. Of course there's always room for a skater to go WAY outside that SD. So I don't think stating that Jason's career mean -/+ SD means that he couldn't do better (though the reverse, that he could do much worse, is also true).

 

[el henry]

No I don't have a problem, thanks.

It's cherry picking to pull one set of data to make Jason look worse than he otherwise would and to exclude a host of data in order to make Vincent look better. Tahuu went back to 2013 in an apparent attempt to show that Jason has a mediocre 242 scoring average that is somehow relevant to what he will score st Worlds or even next season. For the reasons I outlined above, IMO that average is pretty meaningless. It's also cherry picking to categorically exclude all of Vincent's JGP results as not comparable and imply that his Bavarian Open score alone is a valid predictor of anything. Given that he's competing next at Junior Worlds, in fact, it's his junior scores that are relevant, not his one score as a senior.

Hope that helps.

:agree:

And to speak to the more general theme, I still don't see what adding up numbers and calling them a standard deviation does in this case. In my world (and I tried to make clear I was in no way shape or form claiming anything outside this world), SDs were always used in tandem with regression analyses to account for and make sense of all variables. Without accounting for variables, what sense does listing numbers and dividing them make?

Then again, what sense does rehashing one decision involving two skaters in a thread entitled "4CC/Worlds" make, and pushing it to 53 pages already (for which I take full partial responsibility, if such a thing exists?)

 

[karne]

I don't have a problem with the Vincent-pushers using the NHK score as some kind of "evidence" - just as long as I can say, well, Vincent scored 64 for the SP at Golden Spin, don't you all think that's a problem? If you're going to discount one skater's injury when talking scores then you have to discount both injuries or neither.

For clarification, a 64 SP would not have made the cut in Boston (lowest score that made it: 65.20).

 

[ice coverage]

I don't have a problem with the Vincent-pushers using the NHK score as some kind of "evidence" - just as long as I can say, well, Vincent scored 64 for the SP at Golden Spin, don't you all think that's a problem? If you're going to discount one skater's injury when talking scores then you have to discount both injuries or neither. ...

I have long been wishing that we all could forgive and forget both Golden Spin for Vincent and NHK for Jason.

... For clarification, a 64 SP would not have made the cut in Boston (lowest score that made it: 65.20).

All of us -- whether "Jason-pushers" or "Vincent-pushers" or non-pushers -- can keep slicing, dicing, and spinning  the numbers in a zillion different ways for differing purposes.

For example:

Jason's total score at NHK would have put him in 17th place at 2016 Worlds.
So if/if/if that fact had any predictive value regarding his potential placement in Helsinki, then three slots for 2018 would be a lost cause ... so if/if/if we should write off the possibility of three slots for 2018, then maybe/maybe/maybe it would have been just as well to let Vincent get his first experience at Senior Worlds  ... ​

 

[concorde]

If you use the "body of work" argument for one skater's Nationals placement over another, then you really need to review most recent information. For the past season, I think both Jason and Vincent have performed comparable - neither is clearly above the other. Jason did not compete at Nationals in 2016 due to an injury. He then petitioned for a bye to Worlds and was not granted that. It is not like he was the 2016 National Champion and had a top 10 placement at Worlds in 2016.

USFS went back several years when it chose Jason over Vincent and I beleive that is questionable. Do I think it would be ok for USFS to go back and say Marai should go the Worlds because she was 4th at the 2010 Olympics and and she has been National champs so her "body of work" is better than Karen's or Mariah? No - it was too far in the past to be relevant. But if USFS used 2016 information to make the argument, then I would say it was relevant.

The team is set but the selection process lacked transparency.

 

[drivingmissdaisy]

USFS went back several years when it chose Jason over Vincent and I beleive that is questionable.

Best international score this season, at the time the team was picked -
Jason's: 268.38
Vincent's: 226.39

 

[Mrs. P]

Best international score this season, at the time the team was picked -
Jason's: 268.38
Vincent's: 226.39

But Jason is injured! How could possibly score that much ever again?

Sorry to make light of the situation. But At this point, and I'm not picking at you DMD, this has gone in circles so many times, that it's becoming predictable how people will respond.

But hey, it increases page views and thread counts, which isn't a bad thing.

 

[Tavi...]

Honestly, I didn't think Jason came off THAT bad from the exercise and to be fair to Tahuu -- he (she?) pointed out that it would be reasonable to use the season-only (with -NHK out) mean/deviation. But even the career-long deviation actually, for me affirmed Jason's relative consistency. I'm sure if you did the exercise with a far less consistent skater -- Michael Brezina or Denis Ten -- that SD would be way crazier.

Even the career-long deviation, considering all the notable outliers, shows that even a worse case scenario wouldn't be a total meltdown, so he's a reasonable safe bet for Worlds. Of course there's always room for a skater to go WAY outside that SD. So I don't think stating that Jason's career mean -/+ SD means that he couldn't do better (though the reverse, that he could do much worse, is also true).

Mrs P, you are always very reasonable and fair, and I agree with you that Jason's long term average (as to Brezinas or D10's) shows consistency even with injury.

The problem for me is that (1) Tahuu didn't use 2016/2017 with or without NHK, which might have made sense and (2) s/he commented that yeah Jason is consistent - look he's averaged a mediocre 242 since 2013 - and his team (presumably meaning his fans) think that's so great. I'm paraphrasing that and yeah, reading a lot into it, but it seems to me the intent of that post was scornful, not neutral.

As you can see, your average ranges from 248 to 256 - substantially higher than 242 - and the numbers make sense because you're looking at recent data based on his most current training, health, status of 3A, etc.

In other words, I don't think Tahuu's intent in going back to 2013 was to laud Jason's consistency but basically to say, in a world where the top men - including wunderkind Nathan - are now scoring around 300 points, 245 is worthless and has just been eclipsed by Zhou, too. JMO.

 

[Mrs. P]

Mrs P, you are always very reasonable and fair, and I agree with you that Jason's long term average (as to Brezinas or D10's) shows consistency even with injury.

The problem for me is that (1) Tahuu didn't use 2016/2017 with or without NHK, which might have made sense and (2) s/he commented that yeah Jason is consistent - look he's averaged a mediocre 242 since 2013 - and his team (presumably meaning his fans) think that's so great. I'm paraphrasing that and yeah, reading a lot into it, but it seems to me the intent of that post was scornful, not neutral.

As you can see, your average ranges from 248 to 256 - substantially higher than 242 - and the numbers make sense because you're looking at recent data based on his most current training, health, status of 3A, etc.

In other words, I don't think Tahuu's intent in going back to 2013 was to laud Jason's consistency but basically to say, in a world where the top men - including wunderkind Nathan - are now scoring around 300 points, 245 is worthless and has just been eclipsed by Zhou, too. JMO.

Of course it wasn't neutral. However, no analysis even if biased is completely useless. It did give me an opportunity to brush up my standard deviation equation skills. I still maintain that Jason's career-long stats don't look all that terrible.

FWIW: Here's Jason's TES scores this season

SP
41.38
42.08
43.32
31.80 NHK Trophny
35.80 (U.S. Nationals)
38.77

FS
88.91
85.36
92.61
62.44 NHK Trophy
82.52 (U.S. Nationals)
79.36

And Vincent's
SP
44.60
43.10
30.26 Golden Spin
48.53 (US Nationals)
46.68

FS
75.52
67.18
(W/D from FS at Golden Spin)
93.24 (U.S. Nationals)
86.48

Both skaters this season has had some great skates and some downright terrible skates. If you throw out the highest and lowest score of each for each segment. Vincent comes out a lot better, TES wise in the SP while Jason comes out better in the FS, though both shown erratic patterns due to their struggle events."

It would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall in that committee selection room.