Skating

[dsrtao]

(This is mostly for Elizabear, but, hey, feel free to read it.)

I was vaguely bothered by the new ISU judging system incorporating random dropping of judge's scores; it turns out that Real Statisticians agree with me. http://www.stat.yale.edu/~jay/EC2006/

The upshot: closely graded competitors can be ranked in different orders depending on which scores are randomly thrown out; actual data from recent competitions shows exactly that happening.

Comments

[elizabear.livejournal.com]

More details in my own LJ, but I acknowledge the new system isn't perfect. The link seems to show the same 3 judges' scores are discarded for the whole event, so it's the same as having only 9 judges period. Even if different judges get picked each time, it's still better than the old system.