Hee! If that's a serious question, I'd say no. In figure skating it's more important to drop the extremes because there are only, what?, 10 or 15 judges? We'll probably get 100 votes votes so dropping one "10" vote and one "100" vote doesn't gain us much.

It actually was. *g*

I'm so used to doing it, because well, we did it all the time the year I took stats (it was important to do so with the data we were studying, to clarify), and I do it (or did it, as I'm no longer doing that) when adjusting data for horse racing information, that I tend to assume the correction.

First of all, I’m all for the new way of selecting MVT and seconds. Letting people enter their choice and taking the mean is cooler than preferential voting on a fixed list. (All about the stats, baby! I wanna see mean, median, mode, standard deviation, distribution curves, yeah!) And having limits on the range is obviously necessary.

Now we’ve just got to quibble about the limits. Typo Boy wants seconds to be 1-15 rather than 1-10. Fine with me.

Somebody’s got to quibble about the MVT limits, and I guess that’s me. I think both 10 and 100 are too high. I’d suggest that 100 is unreasonably high. The second ballot we did got only 100 votes, so I think 100 for a limit is way, way too high. If the upper limit is unreasonably high, the lower limit should be unreasonably low, like say 2. 10 is, well, reasonable. If the lower limit is reasonable, the the upper limit should be as well. What’s a reasonable number for the upper limit? I’m not sure we have enough data to say yet. Last week the number 65 was mentioned several times. I’d be willing to accept that as reasonable for now.

So either 2-100 or 10-65, please?

Why quibble over 2 vs. 10 for the lower limit? 32% of us voted against MVT on the first ballot, so consistency would dictate that we vote for the lower limit, which will skew the mean lower. I’m warning y’all, I’m ready to fight every step of the way – if not 2, then 3. If not 3, then 4.

I got a whole lot more to say on this, but it’ll take me a while to get my thoughts together.

Jon, would we be doing that adjustment for extremes, like in figure skating?

t pedant Gymnastics and diving drop the high and low score--figure skating uses the marks as placeholders to rank the skaters, so that the winner isn't the skater with the highest point total, but the one who gets the majority of first-place rankings from the judges. Until this year, all the marks counted, but now they've got the stupid anonymous system where a computer randomly selects which judges' marks will count. The I-D-O-T idiot in charge of the ISU, who comes from the speedskating side of the sport and doesn't know from figure skating really, wants to change the scoring system even further, rather than something logical like, oh, I dunno, CRACKING DOWN ON CORRUPT JUDGES AND FEDERATIONS. t /pedant

t natter Susan, if you're interested, Math Horizons (a math magazine for undergrads) had an article about figure skating judging this month. t /natter

figure skating uses the marks as placeholders to rank the skaters, so that the winner isn't the skater with the highest point total, but the one who gets the majority of first-place rankings from the judges.

Yeah, but I thought the marks were determined using standard mean calculations, throwing out the (say) 4.8 and the 6. Though it's been years since I bothered to watch, and I'm just remembering being really confused when the high and low would get crossed out on my TV screen as a kid.

I think some professional competitions do it that way. Also, I can't speak for how long Olympic-eligible has used the present system. I've been a serious fan since the mid 90's, so that's all I'm absolutely sure of.

Susan -- That anonymous system you described boggles me. I am boggled. Shake me up and look for words.

I tend to agree with Billytea (doin' the secret actuary handshake). I think we should be as inclusive as possible, so I'd prefer 2-100 over 10-65.

As long as every one understands that FIFTY IS THE CORRECT ANSWER, I don't care what the range is for MVT voting.

That anonymous system you described boggles me. I am boggled. Shake me up and look for words.

Most fans are boggled, and while the skaters are trying to be diplomatic, we think they are, too. There's even going to be an official No Secret Judging protest at Worlds at the end of the month, with some pretty savvy PR types from the fandom shepherding it.

It is not at all surprising to me that I agree with Jesse!