Jump to content

Winning Score 97.60


Recommended Posts

For 2015, scores throughout the season have been at a 12-year historic low. Generally, scores for the top 3 corps - Blue Devils, The Cadets, and Carolina Crown - have been right at -2 points from the champions' score trajectories from 2003-2014.

2015.score.trend.9.days.out.png

The rainbow of smaller dots are the season scores for the champions from 2003-2014. I highlighted with bigger dots two score sets: Blue Devils 2007 (green), who started the season scoring 75+ and won with a finals score of 98.00, and Blue Devils 2014 (red), the all-time highest score at finals, 99.65. Note the wildly different paths to those wins, and the 7 points increase for the 2014 Blue Devils at -40 days out from finals.

The 3 lines below the main array of dots shows the Blue Devils, The Cadets, and Carolina Crown scores for 2015, up until -9 days before finals. If those 3 drum corps names for 2015 weren't known in the plot, you'd think none of them could be contenders to win it all this year. Just in the last week, the 2015 scores have started to intersect with the past champions' scores.

In past years, the linear regression for the winner's finals score at -N days from finals often goes to a score at or over 100. It has been very common to see the Thursday/Friday/Saturday show scores for the eventual winner to fall about 1 point below the regression line.

This year, it appears that scoring will track, it may be argued, as it should - linearly increasing right through Saturday night. Corps continue to make consistent fixes and improvements in their show performances right up until the very end. Some years, corps pull out surprises for Saturday night only, like SCV did in the 80's. So scores can buck the linear trend for various reasons, but all things being equal, the kids keep working as hard as they have all season, the shows get that much better even in the final week, and the scores should reflect this right along the trend line.

Here is the aggregation of the champions' scores, showing the mean/max/min in black and gray:

2015.score.trend.9.days.out.minus.png

Here we see the mean and max 2015 scores for the top 3 contenders in blue and red, respectively. For the best 2015 drum corps, the scores have been below the min boundary for past winners for almost the entire season. Note the sets of 3, 3, and 4 data points at day -28 and forward which start far below the regression line, but by day -16, catch up to it. Relative to previous years, whether for judges scoring or massive show improvements or both, the top 3 contenders for this year made huge strides.

The red line shows the linear regression for the max scores - the smaller red circles - which point to a final score at day=0, finals Saturday night, of 97.60.

Will the winner's score exceed 97.60? I think it's entirely likely. Yet, if scores were to follow the trends from the last 12 years, if no one drum corps has miraculous improvement in the final 7 days of the season, and if the eventual winner doesn't pull out a Saturday night surprise show element, it looks like the winning score will be right in the 97.60 to 98.00 range, rounding up a bit factoring in the excitement even for the judges and the importance of finals night.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Could be completely accurate, since no one corps has a firm grasp on multiple captions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Could be completely accurate, since no one corps has a firm grasp on multiple captions.

That's a great explanation of why we're seeing lower scores. I've only seen one show this season at Stanford University, and I haven't followed scores and caption scores much since then. What you said sounds spot on - I recall years in which horns, drums, GE and guard wins were split by different drum corps, and naturally the winning scores in those years are 97.X or thereabouts.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If 97.60 is the winning score, it would be only the 3rd time since 2000 the winning score would be under 98.00.

Cadets/Cavies 97.65 in 2000

Cavies 97.20 in 2006

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Highlighting the 2006 Cavaliers as pointed out as the lowest finals score since 2000:

2015.score.trend.2006.cavaliers.png

The black line shows the Cavaliers scoring trend line. They had quite a few high scores during the season, relative to other winners' scores, yet that telltale 3 score cluster for Thursday/Friday/Saturday at the end of the season.

Edited by dalyea
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...