Int'l Skating Union OKs New Score System (DanceSport next?)

[Porfirio Landeros]

I know it may seem weird posting this in the ballroom dance section, but there are always comparisons made between ice skating and dancesport. I thought it was pretty interesting to see that a new scoring system was introduced to help prevent future skating scandals.

Yahoo News - Int'l Skating Union OKs New Score System (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040609/ap_on_sp_ot/fig_isu_congress_4)

Do you think dancesport should have its scoring system re-evaluated, given the recent mistakes and Blackpool and other ongoing controversies?

[Warren J. Dew]

Wow ... a scoring system that avoids controversy by allowing cheating judges to hide behind anonymity, and is so complex it requires "millions" to implement. Just the thing....

[robin]

Other "gems" include:

There will be 12 judges. Three marks will be discarded at random. Then the highest and lowest mark will be discarded. As a scientist I almost cried when I read the idea that randomly discarding 3 marks will make it more "fair"... In effect the results will be affected not only by the judges marks but also by a roll of the dice.

In dancing people have always decried the "Schiavo Barricchi Paradox" whereby a majority of judges could prefer couple A over B but couple B could win (by winning the majority of dances, i won't go into details ;) ). Under this system a skater can lose even if ALL the judges see him as the best... Don't believe it? Here goes:

Skater A scores:
6x 10
6x 9.5

Skater B scores
6x9.8 (same judges as gave 10 to A)
6x9.3 (same judges as gave 10 to B)

now "randomly" skater B loses 3 of the lower score judges while A loses 3 of the higher score judges...

the top and bottom mark are subtracted... this leaves:

A 2x10+5x9.5=67.5
B 5x9.8+2x9.3=67.6

Skater B wins even though EVERY JUDGE has scored them 0.2 lower than Skater A!!!

Even beyond these idiotic proposals (anonymity and discarding random marks), I very much dislike the thinking behind their scoring system.

Essentially a committee gives a score to each figure according to how difficult it is. In ballroom terms lets say a natural turn is 1.0, a spin turn 2.0 and a double reverse with overspin 3.0. Then judges mark each element individually...

In my view this will lead to choreographies optimised to point scores only. Who will do a natural turn? Even if executed perfectly it would score less than a reasonable spin turn... If you watch a diving competitino (where a similar system exists, albeit without discarding random marks), no-one will do a "simple" dive, because even if done perfectly it won't score enough...

Besides, while I've heard several people suggesting using this system for dancesport it would change the entire competition format, you could only have one couple at a time, so an event like Blackpool with 300 entries in each category is just not possible anymore...

Anyway, I could go on, but I really hope dancesport has enough sense not to use such a ludicrous system!

Robin

[pygmalion]

You scenario is scary, robin, and all too plausible. Throwing out the highest and lowest scores makes sense to me. Throwing out scores randomly, I don't understand at all. I wonder if any rationale was given. :?

[robin]

Their thinking is probably aikin to what happens in a firing squad, where one or more members are given blanks instead of bullets. It absolves judges from their responsibility as they can point to the fact that their mark might not have been involved.

This goes hand in hand with the anonymity. Essentially all measures are designed to reduce accountability, which i think is a terrible idea, and i can't see how any clearly thinking person could have come up with it!

Robin

[DancePoet]

If I understand what Robin is describing, the new system sounds very bad!

[pygmalion]

Yes it does sound bad. Just curious. Does anyone have something good to say about this system? Why is it being adopted, with such obvious flaws?

[etchuck]

I could never figure out why skating's system is not like the system for judging gymnastics (if they did decide to change things). They don't split marks for gymnastics (since I'm guessing there is no such thing as "artistry" ?)...

I guess you get a bunch of non-statisticians together to react to a judging scandal, and this is what you get. I understand revamping the scoring system to reward technical difficulty by expected element, and certainly a little more objectivity in "artistry" would help. But I don't like the dropping of 3 random scores outside of the hi and low. It makes no sense.

[Elizabeth]

:roll: People who can't do math shouldn't try to come up with scoring systems. Sadly, I doubt that the people responisble for adopting this system put as much thought into it as Robin.

[Warren J. Dew]

Their thinking is probably aikin to what happens in a firing squad, where one or more members are given blanks instead of bullets. It absolves judges from their responsibility as they can point to the fact that their mark might not have been involved.

This goes hand in hand with the anonymity. Essentially all measures are designed to reduce accountability, which i think is a terrible idea, and i can't see how any clearly thinking person could have come up with it!

Perhaps the person was a judge who wanted to be absolved from responsibility.

[robin]

Perhaps the person was a judge who wanted to be absolved from responsibility.

I read a few more articles about it and I think i now understand where these ideas come from. If you think back to the "ice-dancing scandal" of the last winter olympics, a judge claimed to be pressurised to judge a certain way. Under the new system there would be no such pressure as noone could verify how she voted, so in that respect "it works".

This just goes to show that if you focus too much on solving one problem, it's very easy to create a big array of new ones! Judges who *want* to be biased for example now have the absolute freedom to do whatever they want without any scrutiny!

Also, by trying to make the marking system "objective" they have fundamentally changed the nature of competition. Sports that include an element of artistry will always require a degree of subjective marking even when it's hidden behind a complicated scoring system involving technicians and computers...

The "skating system" that is used to mark dancesport is actually exceptionally good at avoiding bias. The only way to really affect the outcome through block voting is if you have the majority of judges colluding with each other. In that case it is obviously hopeless to get a "fair" result anyway... But one or two judges favouring a couple of their nationality for example will have almost no impact on the final result.

The rigidity of a technical/objective marking system that splits a performance down into individual elements would also stop a sport from developing, as everyone would merely try to maximise their points by choosing things to do from a prescribed catalogue, rather than experimenting with new styles and interpretations (as discussed in another thread...)

Robin