Exactly.

Is there any sport in which that's done? It seems to me that they're always marking each performance after it happens, in figure skating for example.

Anyway, I agree about the 1st couple problem (and it can also happen with the 2nd and 3rd couples). In figure skating, the best skaters seem to be towards the end, perhaps in part to avoid that sort of under-marking.

But re preconceived ideas, I'm not sure ranking them at the end would be better. After all, a judge may have a preconceived idea that couple A is better than couple B. Yet marking each dance when it was danced, focusing on that dance, might have had them give B better marks than A (if B happened to be better that week).


I don't think the results need to be changed very much, though, so far as the effects of the scoring system are concerned.

Probably no system is entirely without problems, but the way ties are not handled strikes me as a pretty severe one. The old SCD system is at least more intuitive, imo. Top means top; bottom means bottom (1 point).

It's true that the old system gives all but one of those who are tied more help than if they'd been spread out in the marks, but at least it leaves everyone else the same (as if there'd been no tie). The new system doesn't.

So, bearing in mind the old saying the best is enemy of the good, I'd like to see a change back to the old system even if that isn't the very best system possible. (Of course if SCD could change to an even better system, that would be cool, but we shouldn't avoid making things better just because something else might be better still.)

Ah! I'd assumed that the person at the bottom always being save-able was meant to be a good thing, and so if it was a reason to return to the old system it would be because the old system had that property.

But as you've spotted, the post actually seems to be saying that if the new system ("now") had that property, it would be a reason to go back to the old -- as if the save-ability of the person at the bottom were something to be avoided.

I'd be surprised if that actually was what TigerRose meant, since imo it doesn't make much sense (given the reason the system was changed), but perhaps it is what was meant.

So I think this needs to be clarified.


I'm sorry, but I can't tell what you think that means.

Which system are you using (old or new)?

What's shocking about the entries in red? Is it just that they don't follow the judge's leaderboard re who's in the bottom 2?

And what do you think we should conclude from those red entries being possible? It seems ties make things worse, but beyond that ... ?



The whole discussion that followed Tiger Rose's post has been confused, imo, because it's not clear what T.R. meant, as I've tried to explain above.

Ditto back to you

You can see by the way I've marked the tied leaderboards that it is the 'new' one.

Yes - it was tongue in cheek () for an otherwise fairly boring post.

It's not for me to tell anyone what they should conclude.
TR asked if it was possible to escape when bottom of the leaderboard and I tried to show visually how much it IS possible with 4 contestants.

I'm sorry it was not clear enough for you.

Only by looking closely at a lot of confusing detail.


I wasn't questioning the word "shocking". I was just wanting to know what it was that put them in that category, regardless of what it was called. I can see why it seemed otherwise, however, especially since an earlier post had questioned "shock" as it is often used.


I wasn't asking you to tell anyone else what they should conclude. It was just another way of asking what the post was trying to show or illustrate or whatever was meant.


If you had said something like "this shows how much it's possible to escape from the bottom of the leaderboard in the new SCD system", then it would at least have been a lot clearer.

I don't know why you have -- it seems -- taken offence rather than simply explaining. I just said I couldn't work out what it was supposed to be showing.

I don't know of any sport that marks this way, but SCD isn't a sport and because the public vote, I'd say it is close to Eurovision than any sport.

In ice skating the key difference is that the couples are marked on how well they execute skating elements, each of which has a set score value and before skating, the skater announces which elements they will attempt (a bit like diving).

You can't remove preconceptions altogether, but a judge might at least think twice about where they rank a couple after they have seen all the dances.

How are Ballroom and Latin dance competitions scored (I don't mean medal tests)? I know that in the early rounds it is a pass system and the more passes you get, the more chance you have of moving on to the next round. I also though that in the final you are ranked with no ties allowed.

I would love to know more though.

The easiest thing is to return to the original scoring system used in the first five series, but I would prefer the ranking system.

Just my opinion of course.

Ice skating has had its problems. In Torville and Dean's comeback year (1994) after they'd skated their free programme in the Euros as the penultimate couple, they were in second place. After the final couple skated, they were in first place.

At the time, skating was decided by the number of first places with the judges and the final couple were more favoured by the judges who'd ranked T&D second, so the "anti-T&D" (as a term - the voting only got political at the OGs that year!) vote was split by the other two couples.

I wonder how Brucie would cope with that?

With difficulty!

No?


No offence taken, just responding in the same vein.

No. It was just another way of asking what the post was trying to show or illustrate or whatever.


But I wasn't posting in that vein. I didn't understand what your post was trying to show, and I wanted to understand it.

I think that makes it sound more unreasonable that it was.

Skating used to use a system that combined marks from different judges in a way that didn't depend on what numbers they used but only on the order each judge put the skaters in. It was a bit like the way the SCD judges marks are just used to put the skaters in some order, and it doesn't matter exactly what marks had been awarded. (If you're top, you're top, regardless of whether it was with a 40 or a 29.)

However, in SCD the judges' marks are added together rather than combined in the "ordinal" fashion used in skating. Since SCD marks are relative marks, to an extent -- I mean a 9 can mean better than the 8s rather than 9 on some absolute scale -- it doesn't actually make sense to add them together. The skating system was more logical, but harder to understand.

It was a counterintuitive feature of that system that if you computed the placings after each skate had finished, sometimes A would be above B when before B had been above A -- because of marks awarded to a third competitor, C, who'd skated after them.

If you simply looked at the end result, however, it made sense. (And there would have been the same final result if the skaters had skated in a different order, with C skating before A or B and so no "flip".)

What skating does now in the so-called "code of points" is try to specify every possible thing a skater can do and how it should be marked, with separate people deciding what was done from those marking it.

Hmm. I don't see how it ends up closer to Eurovision. But then I know little of Eurovision. Are there judges in Eurovision who award marks that make any difference? Or is there something interesting about the way the votes / marks from different countries are combined?

Sports are relevant because that's where most of our experience in marking systems (and in evaluating performances) comes from.

Politics is relevant too, since that's where we get most of our experience with voting systems.


That's a difference, but I don't think it matters re when the scoring happens. And skating has used other systems earlier. So far as I know, each routine was always marked after it was performed, not at the end.


But for the reason I gave before, marking each dance as it happens could be better at reducing the effects of preconceptions.

Sure, a judge might think twice if they ranked them all at the end, but the second thought might be to put them in the preconceived order rather than in the one the dances had deserved.

I'm pretty sure judges would be accused of that, even if it weren't true, just as they're now accused of marking based on rehearsals, favouritism, and so on.

Also, their memories of the earlier dances would not be fresh. And memory, even more than perception, can be influenced by what someone already believed.

There may be benefits to such a ranking system, but I'm skeptical that reducing the effects of pre-conceptions would be one of them.

However, I second you interest in knowing more about how dance contests are marked.

Buddy, not sure whether it varies. For example here is a link to a document describing the IDSF judging system:
http://www.idsf.net/edc/IDSF_DanceSp...stem_Media.pdf

WDC, IDTA etc might have different systems.

Here is a link to Scrutelle which gives details of the scoring of various major competitions including Blackpool dance festival (shown here) http://www.scrutelle.info/results/es...2010/index.htm System used at Blackpool is similar to what you describe. Quite a few judges. They each say which dancers they want to recall in the earlier rounds.Recalls get added up and those dancers with the most recalls progress to next round. In later rounds, each judge places dancers in preferred order and overall position is derived from this.

I don't think any of this is appropriate for Strictly for various reasons.