inflated ratings

[edew]

Originally posted by epeemike81
I think we should clarify the term "inflation". By the term inflation, I mean that there are many cases where it is easier to earn a rating now than it has been in the past. Earlier this year, I noticed that somebody had earned a b in my division who I didn't think should have. I then started noticing numerous C's, B's and A's being awarded to fencers who didn't seem on par. I am used to seeing some flukey ratings. that is to be expected with the system we use. however the level of "flukey" ratings has gone up so far that it is no longer possible to define them as flukes. that is to say that the average level of fencing required to earn an A, B, or C has decreased. Thus, you end up with more high ratings, which begets more high ratings. thus, inflation. Thus, it has nothing to do with who should beat whom, but rather with a qualitative analysis of all of the C's, B's, and A's in my division. Admittedly, this is all based on my own perception of this years results in NE and the surrounding divisions, but I believe many of my peers from those divisions would agree with me (feel free to chime in, guys).

-m

I see your point. I think that the inflation is only imaginary because of several factors. One is that the whole classification table has been revised and new classifications are awarded to further down the line. It is done to fit the DE format that we now use.

Another factor is allowing for earning classifications at age-restricted events, which might be the cause of some grumblings about whether a person who is a C03 because he or she earned it fencing in a Youth-10 event is "legitimately" a C03. The answer, as I supplied before, is that the person is definitely a legitimate C03.

I also think that many people are organizing better to hold "stronger" tournaments so that more people have opportunities to rightfully earn these new ratings. Before the advent of the internet, people just didn't know where to go, and if the newsletter didn't come out in time, there would literally be events with no more than 5 or 6 people showing up. Now, competitions can be better advertised, people are willing to expend the time to attend, and thus competitions do have stronger classifications. And, then, the probability of a person earning a new rating goes up with the number and strength of the event.

Some events are even strictly promoted to get people to earn new ratings. So, the promotion factor, and the ability to broadcast that information makes for larger and stronger tournaments, thus enabling more people to rightfully earn new ratings.

[epeemike81]

Originally posted by edew
I see your point. I think that the inflation is only imaginary because of several factors. One is that the whole classification table has been revised and new classifications are awarded to further down the line. It is done to fit the DE format that we now use.

Another factor is allowing for earning classifications at age-restricted events, which might be the cause of some grumblings about whether a person who is a C03 because he or she earned it fencing in a Youth-10 event is "legitimately" a C03. The answer, as I supplied before, is that the person is definitely a legitimate C03.

I also think that many people are organizing better to hold "stronger" tournaments so that more people have opportunities to rightfully earn these new ratings. Before the advent of the internet, people just didn't know where to go, and if the newsletter didn't come out in time, there would literally be events with no more than 5 or 6 people showing up. Now, competitions can be better advertised, people are willing to expend the time to attend, and thus competitions do have stronger classifications. And, then, the probability of a person earning a new rating goes up with the number and strength of the event.

Some events are even strictly promoted to get people to earn new ratings. So, the promotion factor, and the ability to broadcast that information makes for larger and stronger tournaments, thus enabling more people to rightfully earn new ratings.

Again, I am NOT saying that these people did not "rightfully" earn their new ratings, or even that they are flukey or too weak for the rating they have, just that the bars appear to have been lowered. your explanation of why is very good, but it doesn't change the fact that the average A is much weaker than it used to be.

-m

[edew]

Well, first off, it's hard to compare fencers today versus fencers of another time period. It's like saying whether Ted Williams is a better batter than Barry Bonds or Sosa.

But my claim still stands: there are now more large tournaments and more avenues to getting the A. Previously, only the top-6 at a national event would earn an A. All other events would earn just the winner an A, if it satisfied all the conditions. Now, it's possible to have an A3 or A4 rated tournament where 4 or 8 A's can be given out. And there are more of them because of better communication and preparation.

I remember my years in Philadelphia where we would NEVER have an A-rated foil tournament. And this was with plenty of good fencers around. Lack of communication, publicity and such caused most events to be poorly attended. Now, we have better publicity and communication so that enough people attend large tournaments to make A3's or A4's.

Again, more opportunities to get A's will result in more people with A's. Whether these folks will beat other contemporary A's or A's from another era is really a moot point.

[epeemike81]

Originally posted by edew
Well, first off, it's hard to compare fencers today versus fencers of another time period. It's like saying whether Ted Williams is a better batter than Barry Bonds or Sosa.

Um, not quite. I'm talking about people earning high ratings who wouldn't have been able to LAST YEAR. this is hardly a different era we are talking about....

-m

[edew]

That's hardly a valid comparison either. When Dmitri KirkGordon moved to the Silicon Valley, I easily beat him at competitions. He had skills and innate ability. Then he earned his A and I still could beat him, but it was a bit tougher. Now, I couldn't touch him with a ten-foot pole. I'd be lucky to get four touches on him. All that occurred within a span of three years. First year, I beat him. Second year, we matched up. By mid-second year, he kicked my butt up and down the strip.

There are others who similarly have improved. And then, there are others who have increased their classification, but I can still beat consistently, all with improved classifications within the year.

Again, the point is that the classification system only tells you how well a person did at his or her best within the past four years. It does not give you any more information (and does not purport to). Since we now have many more tournaments, and larger tournaments at that, where many new classifications are awarded, there are more opportunities for fencers to "do best within the four years".

If I only go to NACs, I can guarantee you that I would never and will never get my A. And if our division and section did not make the effort to put out a schedule with good, strong competition, I again would not be able to get my A. But we do have many strong competition. We have 6 Group A1/A2 Men's Foil competitions locally in the Bay Area. Add to that five more Group A1-A4 Open Foil competitions held in the Pacific Coast section, and you have 11 events where someone can "do his best" and make a high enough finish to get the A. Add the three Div I NACs and Div I Nationals and Div IA Nationals and you have 16 events per year. That doesn't include going to other divisions or sections where they might have strong tournaments scheduled.

In all, we just have that many more events for people to do well. Put all these into a mathematical model with various probabilities for each fencer and you'll see that you have a pretty good chance for more people to get an A classification.

As I mentioned in the thread about the Duel In The Desert, four of the top-8 fencers in the Open Foil were not A's. So we just had 4 new A03's, the maximum possible number of new A's from one event. That would not have happened if the DITD wasn't around. Ok, some people had an easier bracket than others (mine was tougher than many others), and there were A's who did not make the top-8, but they made the top-8 and others didn't. That gave them the A03.

(On the other hand, the open epee was much tougher with 27 A's. I think only one non-A made the final 8, and he was a non-A for all of four days, dropping from an A98 to a B03 as of January 1, 2003.)

[veeco]

This all depends on what one expects of ratings.

If one expects ratings to be used to predict accurately the result of a competition, or even to give a precise estimate on the exact result of a bout between 2 fencers, then the current rating system is inappropriate at best, and another one should be designed.

If one expects ratings to be used to seed fencers into different pools so that they have roughly equal strengths, then the current rating system does what it's supposed to do. With certain reserve, one can say that using the current rating system to allow entry into different categories of NACs is also making a good use of them (provided that good judgment is used when deciding which ratings should be allowed to go to which competitions).

[Capt. Slo-mo]

Originally posted by epeemike81
By the term inflation, I mean that there are many cases where it is easier to earn a rating now than it has been in the past. Earlier this year, I noticed that somebody had earned a b in my division who I didn't think should have. -m

Well, theres the argument that the current ratings system is worthwhile, if for no other reason than it keeps epeemike from having to personally put his imprimatur on each letter achieved.

Beyond that, I am genuinely curious to what you would attribute this inflationary effect. I agree with Edew that more tournaments appear to be organized to give more improved letter opportunities. Your tone seems to imply malfeasance, or a fundamental flaw manifesting itself in just the last year or so.

What is it?

[edew]

Originally posted by Capt. Slo-mo
Well, theres the argument that the current ratings system is worthwhile, if for no other reason than it keeps epeemike from having to personally put his imprimatur on each letter achieved.

Beyond that, I am genuinely curious to what you would attribute this inflationary effect. I agree with Edew that more tournaments appear to be organized to give more improved letter opportunities. Your tone seems to imply malfeasance, or a fundamental flaw manifesting itself in just the last year or so.

What is it?

Yes, the only way I can see how a person can earn a classification that the person did not deserve could arise from either a mistake by the bout committee is determining the strength of the competition, or by collusion by some other fencer or referee to allow someone to make it high enough to earn an inappropriate rating.

If someone legitimately finish high enough to get a B or an A, then that person deserves it. By definition. There is no such thing as "So-and-so got a B but doesn't deserve it" unless there was fraud or administrative incompetence.

[epeemike81]

Originally posted by edew
That's hardly a valid comparison either. When Dmitri KirkGordon moved to the Silicon Valley, I easily beat him at competitions. He had skills and innate ability. Then he earned his A and I still could beat him, but it was a bit tougher. Now, I couldn't touch him with a ten-foot pole. I'd be lucky to get four touches on him. All that occurred within a span of three years. First year, I beat him. Second year, we matched up. By mid-second year, he kicked my butt up and down the strip.

There are others who similarly have improved. And then, there are others who have increased their classification, but I can still beat consistently, all with improved classifications within the year.

Again, the point is that the classification system only tells you how well a person did at his or her best within the past four years. It does not give you any more information (and does not purport to). Since we now have many more tournaments, and larger tournaments at that, where many new classifications are awarded, there are more opportunities for fencers to "do best within the four years".

If I only go to NACs, I can guarantee you that I would never and will never get my A. And if our division and section did not make the effort to put out a schedule with good, strong competition, I again would not be able to get my A. But we do have many strong competition. We have 6 Group A1/A2 Men's Foil competitions locally in the Bay Area. Add to that five more Group A1-A4 Open Foil competitions held in the Pacific Coast section, and you have 11 events where someone can "do his best" and make a high enough finish to get the A. Add the three Div I NACs and Div I Nationals and Div IA Nationals and you have 16 events per year. That doesn't include going to other divisions or sections where they might have strong tournaments scheduled.

In all, we just have that many more events for people to do well. Put all these into a mathematical model with various probabilities for each fencer and you'll see that you have a pretty good chance for more people to get an A classification.

As I mentioned in the thread about the Duel In The Desert, four of the top-8 fencers in the Open Foil were not A's. So we just had 4 new A03's, the maximum possible number of new A's from one event. That would not have happened if the DITD wasn't around. Ok, some people had an easier bracket than others (mine was tougher than many others), and there were A's who did not make the top-8, but they made the top-8 and others didn't. That gave them the A03.

(On the other hand, the open epee was much tougher with 27 A's. I think only one non-A made the final 8, and he was a non-A for all of four days, dropping from an A98 to a B03 as of January 1, 2003.)

you are STILL missing my point. I am not saying that people are earning ratings that they couldn't earn a year ago, I am saying that people are earning ratings that their CURRENT SKILL LEVEL would be insufficient to earn (on average) a year ago.

-m

[Philistine]

Originally posted by epeemike81
you are STILL missing my point. I am not saying that people are earning ratings that they couldn't earn a year ago, I am saying that people are earning ratings that their CURRENT SKILL LEVEL would be insufficient to earn (on average) a year ago.

-m

To what do you attribute this?

--Philistine

[epeemike81]

Originally posted by Capt. Slo-mo
Beyond that, I am genuinely curious to what you would attribute this inflationary effect. I agree with Edew that more tournaments appear to be organized to give more improved letter opportunities. Your tone seems to imply malfeasance, or a fundamental flaw manifesting itself in just the last year or so.

What is it?

I have no idea. I have noticed the symptoms, and have heard the same thoughts from others in my area. I have no idea what is causing it, as it is certainly not attributable to allowing age restricted ratings, which has produced virtually no ratings in my area. I find it very interesting, actually, and would love to know what it is attributable to.

Also, let me clarify: at the time, there were a couple of ratings which I (and others) thought were flukey. It has since become clear that the norm (at least in the northeast) has shifted.

-m

[epeemike81]

Originally posted by edew
If someone legitimately finish high enough to get a B or an A, then that person deserves it. By definition. There is no such thing as "So-and-so got a B but doesn't deserve it" unless there was fraud or administrative incompetence.

No, there are not undeserved ratings. There ARE, however, flukey ratings. I'm sure we all know somebody who when they earned a certain rating inspired the thought "they won't re-earn THAT anytime soon". It is a natural consequence of having such a non-specific rating system.

-m

[a517dogg]

The USFA did change this last year how they gave out ratings at competitions: they are handing out more Es Ds and Cs that they did last year. That means with more Cs and Ds, more competitions turn into B and A tournements.
Also, I am in NE area and earned my C at an age restricted, however that was probably more earned than my A at the open (in the JO quals, the top four was 3 B fencers and me).

[BugabooX]

As was pointed out earlier, a rating is really just a vague estimation of ability useful only for seeding purposes at the beginning of an event. When it's all over, the only thing that really matters is who won, not whether he deserved it based on some letter tattooed across his forehead. All else is ego. For the other 99 percent of participants who fall below the No. 1 position, a letter grade may be confirmation that, yes, some improvement has been achieved since the last event. It gets messy when someone else gets the grade that we think we deserve -- as though one man's success somehow diminishes another man's intrinsic value.

I do find it amusing, though, that at least one person on this thread has supported that perspective, AND in the past has insinuated that anyone who isn't an A-rated fencer is an unworthy piker. It's very easy to flip-flop on artificial value judgments.

[edew]

Whatever one might think that a fencer's rating (classification) might measure, it should not and does not measure the flukeosity factor. There is so much that goes on in a tournament that can affect the outcome, that the flukiness of one's getting an improved classification can never be taken into account.

It's possible that just one additional touch scored during the pool bouts can place a fencer in a more favorable DE bracket, compared to another fencer. And from that more favorable DE bracket, one can easily cruise into the finals or higher.

Indeed in the past two PCS circuit events, that was what happened to me and others. At the Long Beach Invitational in October, I won all my bouts and was seeded 2nd coming out of the pools. I met up with Jeffrey Chang in the round of 16 to get into the finals and lost. Chang is a more-than-decent fencer, but how did he get stuck at 15th seed coming out of the pools? Maybe if I had lost a few touches here and there, I would have been seeded 4th or 5th and would not meet anything tough before getting into the final-8. Certainly, two other brackets had easier paths (meaning, if I had been in those two other brackets, I would not have met any resistance from among any of those who were in those brackets).

Now, at the DITD, I screwed up in the pools and was seeded 31st. Again, two other brackets were much easier ones, if I had managed to get into them. From looking at where I placed, I realized that my bracket wasn't easy, but was definitely do-able, compared to four five others. Cedric Anen was seeded third from the pools and his bracket (if I had taken his spot, say), was easy. Tim Chang and Alex Wood, first and sixth respectively, were in much tougher brackets. My bracket was certainly tough. But three others were definitely easier.

So are there flukes involved? Well, the fluke factor is everywhere and nowhere. It's everywhere because it's present in everything: each touch scored or not, each move one makes or not. Are you standing facing the sun streaming through the window at 2:30PM? Is your referee going to see that as a beat attack versus your opponent's parry riposte? Was that bib just a bit big and covered the neck's target? Foil bent just a little too much (or too little)? And let's not forget that all this is happening on 10 to 15 other strips simultaneously.

But it's nowhere because in general, the higher seeded fencers end up near the top, and the lower seeded fencers end up near the bottom. The expectation from the initial seeding was pretty accurate.

At the DITD, I was 31st coming out of the pools. Had I gained one or two more touches (or stopped one or two more), I would have been 30th and had to meet Cedric in the round of 32. Bye-bye for me. Had I lost one or two more, I would have been 32nd or 33rd. Then I would meet Tim Chang in the round of 32. Bye-bye again. Between those two Argonauths, I managed to sneak in against just a +2 Uruk-Hai orc.

[epeemike81]

Eric, just answer me this simple question: Have you ever seen somebody earn a rating once, and not ever earn it again?

If somebody earns a D over and over, then earns a C, then doesn't re-earn the C, wouldn't you say that C was a flukey rating? "flukiness", as you put it, is quite quantifiable. it is inversely proportional to the number of times a rating is re-earned.

-m

[edew]

Well, it's hard to pinpoint such a case, because we don't know the future. Who knows if that person decides to quit, then return fifteen years later and does well in some national veterans event and re-earns or improves to a new classification. We just don't have the future to see. And for those who are never fencing again, it could be that the person quit after several years, after having once earned a C or an A. Maybe the person died.

I know of one person locally in the Bay Area who has not ever re-earned his A. He may be a B now. But, he hasn't been fencing competitively for the past 4 years (mostly coaching), and the times he did prior to semi-retiring, he only competed in large NACs and the like events, where re-earning an A is much harder.

So, based just on the frequency of re-earning a classification, there can still be many rational justifications for the infrequency, other than flukiness in getting it in the first place.

And again, the classification is not a forward-looking indicator. It's a backwards-looking indicator. Hence, it only provides information about what had happened. What had happened is that the fencer did sufficiently well in a sufficiently tough event within some recent period of time.

So no, flukiness is not quantifiable because of so many other external rational explanations, and further, the classification only looks at the past: what was done once at the best of times (for that person).

[nahouw]

Eric's right -- the rating is just for the SOLE purpose of seeding the pools -- yes, there is some flukiness in who gets their rating, but it is through the process of the pools that it will all sort itself out. Yes, there may be some unbalanced pools in a competition, but that is why we have a DE -- that will sort everything out. Yes, like Eric says, that 1 touch either way on your indicators in the pools will place you in a different quadrant, but hey, that's just the luck of the draw -- either the fates are with you or they're not (gee, sometimes that referee's bad decision just happened to place you in the easier quadrant <g> -- I hope you go back and thank that referee you yelled at for the bad call after you see that you are in the easier quadrant because of him <g>)

The bottom line, is you just have to work to get where you get.

[BugabooX]

What no one has suggested yet (other than "taking a break" for X years) is that the alleged fluke fencer could have *barely* crested the skill competency line from one zone to the next -- a top C rising to a bot