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#21
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US contest scoring formula is broken
On Jun 23, 11:56*am, John Cochrane
wrote: I also dislike the complexity of the scoring formula. But every bit of this comes from pilot demand! John: Respectfully, I have never had the option (that I know of), on a RC Pilot Poll, of answering Yes/No to the following question: "Would you prefer a simplified rule system?" Maybe if we started out with that question, we (as pilots) could determine if we need to continually micro-engineer the rules to eliminate every perceived inequities. As I can now with a young child in the house, I am going to get out there to race when and where I can, get in the start cyclinder with my fellow competitiors, and then go try and fly as fast as I can within my limited understanding of the current rules. In this agree completely with 21. Do I really understand all, or even most, of the fine nuances of the current rules... No. Will I live with what the RC gives me to play with ... Yes. However, management of the rules to eliminate every single perecived flaw in the rules should not necessarily result in more complification, year after year. EY P.S. - For people who like flying all AT's, really racing your fellow pilots side-by-side, and understanding a simplifed rule system - get your local contest organizer to run a Grand Prix Format race! Its a lot of fun, stays pretty simple and is understandable. Why there has not been more buy-in from the American soaring community I do not know - but I do know the fierceness of the opposition to this style of racing runs very deep here in the States. |
#22
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US contest scoring formula is broken
An observation from outside the Regionals/Nationals pilot group:
Makes me think of a line in 'The Sun Ship Game', along the lines of: With something so beautiful, why would anyone bring competition into it? Does anyone need the complication of looking up paragraphs, pages, reams of rules? If glider competition must be this complicated, what's going to keep people coming back? The STD Nationals entry list should have been at least double that size. Of course, it's easy to blame all the usual time/cost/distance things. But there are other factors and Steve has hit one on the head. Jim |
#23
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US contest scoring formula is broken
On Jun 23, 8:32*pm, JS wrote:
Steve has hit one on the head. Jim No, I disagree. If you passed your glider written without cheating, you can understand the rules in a couple hours. BB is right -- simple formulae gave simple minded results. Non-rules-fanatics can stop reading here :-). The existing scoring formulae -- which I don't like, see above -- do function in an interesting way. What they do is substantially devalue MATs, provided you make minimum distance and finish. Fly minimum distance and finish, voila, you get max distance points plus 30. Fly MD + 1 on an assigned task day, and you're toast. Example here http://tinyurl.com/n3tg3s . One of the strangest thermal soaring days I've flown and I read it wrong (I had some distinguished company). Essentially, I landed out at the finish line, an hour early on a two hour minimum MAT. But I made 52 miles (Minimum distance in this case is 50). I gave up only 173 pts to the winner, who flew 2.5x my distance at decent speed. On the basis of speed and minimum time, I should have scored about 415 points less than the winner. Essentially, I received a bonus for getting a finish of some 242 points. You can see what happened to the guys that didn't make MD and therefore didn't get a finish. Curtains. -Evan Ludeman / T8 |
#24
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US contest scoring formula is broken
On Jun 24, 7:50*am, T8 wrote:
On Jun 23, 8:32*pm, JS wrote: Steve has hit one on the head. Jim No, I disagree. *If you passed your glider written without cheating, you can understand the rules in a couple hours. BB is right -- simple formulae gave simple minded results. Non-rules-fanatics can stop reading here :-). The existing scoring formulae -- which I don't like, see above -- do function in an interesting way. *What they do is substantially devalue MATs, provided you make minimum distance and finish. *Fly minimum distance and finish, voila, you get max distance points plus 30. *Fly MD + 1 on an assigned task day, and you're toast. *Example herehttp://tinyurl.com/n3tg3s. *One of the strangest thermal soaring days I've flown and I read it wrong (I had some distinguished company). Essentially, I landed out at the finish line, an hour early on a two hour minimum MAT. *But I made 52 miles (Minimum distance in this case is 50). *I gave up only 173 pts to the winner, who flew 2.5x my distance at decent speed. *On the basis of speed and minimum time, I should have scored about 415 points less than the winner. Essentially, I received a bonus for getting a finish of some 242 points. *You can see what happened to the guys that didn't make MD and therefore didn't get a finish. *Curtains. -Evan Ludeman / T8 When pilot selected tasks were first done, we had a scoring system that awarded points partly by distance flown and partly by speed achieved. The SadPost as we called it back then was seen as too complicated to fly and do strategy for, so we moved to the time limited tasks we have today because they are simpler and easier to understand and score. The downside is that it is arguable if they as accurately measure pilot performance on short or marginal days. None of the current tasking is hard to understand as far as tactics. Time is not at all critical but, to score well, you need to fly beyond minimum time. If you come back early, you leave points on the table. If you have a bad spot, try to fly longer to reduce the affect of the lost time. That pretty much covers it. Related to the first message in this string, John Good did a quick check and the scoring looks correct. It is worth noting that his comparison of scores relative to current WGC scoring showed that under WGC scoring, the points compression would have been tighter than ours. That is the approximately 180 pt spread under US rules would have been about 120 pt under WGC rules. FWIW Good discussion UH |
#25
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US contest scoring formula is broken
On Jun 23, 7:35*pm, Tim wrote:
P.S. - For people who like flying all AT's, really racing your fellow pilots side-by-side, and understanding a simplifed rule system - get your local contest organizer to run a Grand Prix Format race! Its a lot of fun, stays pretty simple and is understandable. Why there has not been more buy-in from the American soaring community I do not know - but I do know the fierceness of the opposition to this style of racing runs very deep here in the States. It seems to me that a Grand Prix format requires identical gliders for all participants. Where are you going to find 20-50 identical ( or at least equal handicap ) gliders for all the pilots ? Now if the SSA were to buy a fleet of (insert favorite super ship here) and hire college co-eds as crew to drive the fleet from one contest site to the next, I bet we could have a very active Grand Prix circuit :-) Frankly the rules don't really seem that complicated to me, but I am not trying to analyse them, just fly them. One thing that soaring should do in my opinion is change the time cycle for rule changes. Keep the rules constant for 3 or 4 years, then change them. That would reduce the constant whiplash of new rules every year. Todd 3S |
#26
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US contest scoring formula is broken
John Good gave me permission to post his computations I ( PBW = point behind winner - the most useful way to consider the results of a contest day): Pilot US score PBW WGC score PBW 16 790 0 993 0 P7 671 119 932 61 BP 641 149 861 132 7HV 622 168 861 132 2T 622 168 861 132 JP 614 176 861 132 CG 601 189 861 132 1CR 601 189 861 132 4Q 134 656 203 790 Roughly speaking, where the US compresses scores by giving you 600 for any finish, the WGC gives you 861, and compresess the results even more. John Cochrane. |
#27
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US contest scoring formula is broken
On Jun 24, 8:22*am, John Cochrane
wrote: John Good gave me permission to post his computations I ( PBW = point behind winner - the most useful way to consider the results of a contest day): Pilot * * *US score * * PBW * * *WGC score * PBW 16 * * * * * *790 * * * * * * *0 * * * * * * *993 * * * * * *0 P7 * * * * * *671 * * * * *119 * * * * * * *932 * * * * * 61 BP * * * * * 641 * * * * * 149 * * * * * * *861 * * * * 132 7HV * * * * 622 * * * * * 168 * * * * * * *861 * * * * 132 2T * * * * * *622 * * * * * 168 * * * * * * *861 * * * * 132 JP * * * * * *614 * * * * * 176 * * * * * * *861 * * * * 132 CG * * * * * 601 * * * * * 189 * * * * * * *861 * * * * 132 1CR * * * * *601 * * * * * 189 * * * * * * 861 * * * * *132 4Q * * * * * 134 * * * * * *656 * * * * * * 203 * * * * *790 Roughly speaking, where the US compresses scores by giving you 600 for any finish, the WGC gives you 861, and compresess the results even more. John Cochrane. Nice addition BB. It looks as though the WGC rules give points directly proportional to speed/winners speed down to 86.1% of the winner's speed and any finisher slower than that gets exactly the same score. The result is the scoring system only really serves to sort out the top few pilots in a contest. Imagine you are anyone besides the top two finishers in the example above - you have zero opportunity to move up in the standings because your are in the "dead band" (not to be confused with the Grateful Dead band). Put another way - if your pilot seeding is less than 0.791 you will find yourself in this "dead band" nearly half the time. Not a great way to encourage broad participation in the sport - unless you like being in a 6-way tie for third place that is also a 6-way tie for second to last. I vote against taking MDP from 600 to 861 just to emulate WGC. I get the impression that WGC tasking lands out more pilots than US tasking so they may need the compression to prevent the overall winner from being the last pilot without a landout. Given the choice between complex wording of the rules with simple race strategies and simply worded rules requiring complex race strategies (and opportunities for a "high luck" day to swing the outcome of a whole contest), I'll take the former. I do think there are instances where we get overly concerned about "corner cases", or pursue more complex approaches to meeting rules objectives than we might - that is a constant battle to find the more elegant solution. I also disagree with the assertion that the current rules confer some advantage to "rules wonks" who somehow work out winning strategies out of reading the rules over and over again. I do think a plain English translation of what the rules mean and what they are trying to accomplish would be a more interesting and productive read than trying to back it out of formulas. For instance, I still don't know why MDP has an additional 30 points added in. 9B |
#28
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US contest scoring formula is broken
On Jun 24, 1:08*pm, Andy wrote:
For instance, I still don't know why MDP has an additional 30 points added in. It doesn't. It's an 'airfield bonus' fiddled to give a finisher 5 extra points. Result: "Finisher" who goes minimum distance gets five more points than the guy who flies 300 miles and lands out at an airport. -T8 |
#29
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US contest scoring formula is broken
On Jun 23, 6:32*pm, JS wrote:
snip * Does anyone need the complication of looking up paragraphs, pages, reams of rules? If glider competition must be this complicated, what's going to keep people coming back? snip I disagree, I however do agree that this may be the sterotype of competition pilots by non competition pilots. I am guessing that maybe 80% of the regional compention pilots haven't actually read the rules since their 1st contest. The basics for contest flying are 1.2.3. 1. Know how and when to start. 2. Know how fly into the turn points, TAT's and MAT require some thought but very little understanding of the specific rules. 3. Know how and when to finish. I know competition pilots that that is all the really know about the competition rules and all they care to know. They just go fly the task. One of these pilots often wins our regional contest. Brian HP16T N16VP I |
#30
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US contest scoring formula is broken
On Jun 23, 10:16*am, Mike the Strike wrote:
snip We need rules that you can understand and don't need special programs to figure out. *That's why many of us enjoy participating in OLC - it's dead simple and you know how it's scored. Steve's proposal has a lot of merit, but probably has a low chance of being adopted because of inertia in the system. snip Mike The scoring program is not really any more complicated that what the OLC does. I would have no problem scoring a contest manually IF (in big letters) I could calculate the distances easily. To do so we would have to get rid of the TAT task and any Best Distance Scoring and go back to the old systems where the distances were fixed for AST Tasks or at least easily calculatable for MAT task. I personally liked the fixed distances idea in that it does simpify the scoring, but the Best Distance Scoring appears to have some safety benefits to it as well as additional Task options. On days where everyone finishes in reasonable amounts of time, The score would be really quite simple to calculate if the distance was easy to calculate. I think this would probably apply to at least 80 percent of the contest days flown. The other 20% of the days would invoke some of the exceptions and other score rules that would take some time to apply but even then it usually would only apply to a few competitors. It would be interesting to review some score sheets and see how many competitors scores were not the simple percentage of fastest finisher. As for idea of asking the poll question "Do you think the rules are to complicated?" this is dumb question in that everyone wants simpler rules. The much better question is "What one thing would you like to simplfy or remove from our current rules" This is a much harder question as John C. has pointed out each rule was put in for a reason. To the credit of the rules commitee I do think they work hard to keep the rules as simple as possible, Remember to 15 minute rule? It is now gone due to popular demand as it complicated the scoring even more.. |
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