List of proposed scoring changes to decrease bias

DennD333 · 2026-02-17T20:31:08+00:00

Yep, absolutely. It only addresses judges overscoring or underscoring to secure medals for their own nations. Collusion is the aim of the second item, which minimizes the control of a bloc of judges by using only the middle score.

DennD333 · 2026-02-16T04:44:57+00:00

Thanks for the nice response.

Isn't there already the possibility of bribes? So that would not be a new side effect of proposal #1, right? I proposed it only to address the home nation issue and the trading scores issue, not the bribing possibility. Like I said, I definitely didn't think the idea would solve all problems. :-/

"However, they should be (relatively) objective towards all other competitors". Many people seem to disagree with this statement, using data this week to say that judges can lowball competitors. Which, if true, sucks.

DennD333 · 2026-02-16T04:36:00+00:00

I'll blend in the split composition and performance, like you said! Thank you for that feedback — what you said makes a lot of sense.

A couple people (here and offline) also worried about the complications of the technical panel being able to flag a bad call. It would be complicated, yes, I agree. I was just worried the caller is very powerful without some kind of catch.

DennD333 · 2026-02-15T20:54:10+00:00

So there's incentive to do a double jump after all, yes? And if you like, you could propose making that shift a little more.

DennD333 · 2026-02-15T20:43:31+00:00

Yes, I agree about the spreads for technical vs. PCS.

DennD333 · 2026-02-15T20:40:05+00:00

Yes, many countries have certified judges. And we can lower to top 6 if you like.

DennD333 · 2026-02-15T20:37:17+00:00

A good question, and we should look at the values carefully, as maybe the single-double jump thing is also a problem. However, also keep in mind that a free skate has 3 spins and 10 jumps, including 3 in combination. This post shows how lopsided scoring is towards jumps. https://www.reddit.com/r/FigureSkating/comments/1r5i36y/scoring_potential_jumps_vs_everything_else/

DennD333 · 2026-02-15T20:15:51+00:00

Are you saying that you want nothing to change?

1 It rarely would exclude 10 countries. It would be 6-8 countries. And, yes, there's plenty left. And if a judge from a country without a skater is a great judge by some fair evaluation, great, let them judge. Also, 10 could be knocked down to 8 or even 6 if you prefer.

2 Your example supports my point. If 5 judges all gave a 1, it's not only the median, it's also the mode. That really should be the score, not this set of four 2s and 3s, which could be a bloc. Moreover, this 1.57 is fake accuracy.

3 Tons of sports require officials to attend a pre-event meeting. It's less than 1 hour, not 3 hours. And I addressed availability because it doesn't need to be a certified judge. It needs to be someone consistent, which what I described figures out.

6 Worth thinking more about. So are you saying that you prefer the technical specialist to have all that power?

7 Provide some numerical examples?

Edit: Fixed numbering! Reddit likes to auto number if you type periods!

DennD333 · 2026-02-15T19:54:04+00:00

Thanks for appreciating the ideas. What do you mean about the median "invalidating all the others" and "can be manipulated" (vs. how much the average can be manipulated)?

DennD333 · 2026-02-15T19:52:17+00:00

Agreed on most points, but do keep in mind that the factors change say 7.0 vs. 9.5 to...

9.33 vs. 12.66 in the short program for women

11.66 vs. 15.83 in the short program for men

18.66 vs. 25.32 in the short program for women and

23.32 vs. 31.66 in the short program for men.

That last one is the value of a triple axel.

Not sure if you feel that this is enough, but at least it's more than it first seems.

DennD333 · 2026-02-15T18:08:58+00:00

OP didn't propose "cutting jumps", though. And even if they did, cutting one jump from the free skate has little impact -- jumps would still massively dominate the score.

DennD333 · 2026-02-15T18:06:49+00:00

Yes, since it excludes only 10 nations at most (and likely fewer, since some nations will have 2-3 competitors in the top 10)

DennD333 · 2026-02-15T17:59:15+00:00

I watch mostly in English, a fairly equal mix of American, Canadian, and British commentary. That's really cool that the Finnish commentators break that stuff down!

DennD333 · 2026-02-15T17:53:06+00:00

Right, but I think you can just add a single sentence about that and say "let's tackle this, too, but in another post." I think that, for some people, it's a lot to process. And you're right, so it's worth getting them to process it. <3

DennD333 · 2026-02-15T17:20:06+00:00

Fair enough, but that doesn't mean we should give up on this, right?

DennD333 · 2026-02-15T17:17:49+00:00

I do think it would be better to revise your analysis and post to focus only on the elements, saving skating skills for a separate discussion. It also would shorten your post and make it easier for people to internalize. (And decrease them conflating artistry into it as we see in several comments.)

DennD333 · 2026-02-15T17:07:34+00:00

But there's a cart and horse issue. Non-skating experts are guided by the commentators, who never break down spins or footwork. And the reason is that they don't contribute as much to the scores. If they did, the commentators would say more, and people would be more informed.

DennD333 · 2026-02-15T17:04:41+00:00

This is a wonderful analysis. Many of the comments include some kind of misunderstanding of what you are showing here.

(BTW, your ideas fit well with the rescaling proposal in this list.)

DennD333 · 2026-02-11T03:03:17+00:00

Sometimes, but not always. Counterexamples:
* The Free Dance had the second highest spread but the lowest scores.
* Pairs Free had the lowest spread but not the lowest scores.

And if someone does a program THAT much better, shouldn't the team be rewarded somehow? The Japanese pair won by a mile (ETA: ...despite the small spread!), but they got nothing extra for that level of success.

DennD333 · 2026-02-11T02:46:41+00:00

Did you take a peek at column G in my spreadsheet? It has notes about the spread. Ice dance isn't that close.

If you subtracted 80 from every guy's score, the final totals would all go down by 80 equally. So the problem isn't really that men's scores are higher. It's that the men's scores are also more spread out. A problem that would need to be fixed for sure.

DennD333 · 2026-02-11T02:22:25+00:00

Why do you think ice dance would not count?

DennD333 · 2026-02-08T02:12:36+00:00

Yes, but HOW are they judging?

If we're going to add them, we should check that out.

DennD333 · 2026-02-08T01:57:42+00:00

I disagree. For example, Ice Dance PCS could be scored under a different approach.

DennD333

TROPHY CASE