Numbers Management

[vferrera]

And how do the judges know who is the best corps in the country when they're not all competing head-to-head?

they don't need to. by giving the top score, they are saying "this is as good or better than anything i've ever seen at this point in the season."

People always say: 1) early season score are meaningless. 2) you can't compare different shows. 3) there is regional "inflation" (east-coast, west-coast, midwest, himalayan, whatever).

These are all calibration issues.

The idea is to make the system a little better calibrated. So the scores DO mean something and CAN be compared.

[Horizon]

Crown's current score really isn't too high. Considering their latest was an 85.1, they wouldn't even make last year's finals with their current show. In fact they would have been in 15th at Semis, behind '08 Colts. Maybe we should consider the possibility that early scores are usually a little too low.

[oldbandguy]

Crown's current score really isn't too high. Considering their latest was an 85.1, they wouldn't even make last year's finals with their current show. In fact they would have been in 15th at Semis, behind '08 Colts. Maybe we should consider the possibility that early scores are usually a little too low.

This is a good point and brings into question "When is an 85....an 85?" If the Colts were performing last year's show TONIGHT at the same level they performed it in semis at last year's finals, would they be scored an 85 tonight? Would they be scored ahead of the current Crown, BD, HNC?

[kdaddy]

Given that the top score at finals is about 99.0 and that the season is about 50 days long, the top score on opening day should be about 74.0 and should increase about 0.5 each day thereafter.

You are ALL ABOUT linear regression... :)

While I see your point about making comparisons and providing benchmarks, scores are asymptotic for a reason other than a manufactured max score - corps at the end of the season naturally improve at a decreasing rate. You can't expect Crown to make the strides score-wise in August that it makes in June, as it is refining its product late in the season.

That said, I have heard anecdotes about "our best performance was..." a show other than finals night, and sometimes other than finals week. And their scores still increased by finals.