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General Effect.... Disagreement?


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1 hour ago, DWW11 said:

I think what bothers me the most about all of this is that these organizations KNOW all of this when they join.  The rules are the rules, and if you don’t like them, don’t play. Of course you want to monitor judges to gauge, if you can, their impartiality, but unless there is evidence of someone actively working to undermine the system, you play the hand you are dealt, or fold. 

World class members vote on the rules every season.  So they approve the sheets.  

Just remember, its not figure skating, where routines are sent ahead for judges to follow along with.   It's asking someone to compare apples against forks, using over complex language, based on the the (apple or fork) usage as determined by someone at a design desk in october before the season.   Achievement numbers are never far from content, so that rules out the performer having much ability to change the numbers. 

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3 hours ago, Ediker said:

I’d be interested to see a math whiz break down DCI’s scoring system, and point out all of the limitations.  One big limitation is when a corps maxes out a caption/subcaption, the scores reflect ranking, but not necessarily the extent one corps was better than the next placement. At best, it’s a fraction of a point, and often much less. Other scored competitions have ditched fixed score ceilings so that judges can better reward achievement. 

This gets a little long and technical, so bear with me or just skip to the next post. :whistle:

I've been a cost accountant for 20+ years and I minored in statistics... I can number crunch with anybody on the planet.  I gave this a go over a decade ago and ran out of free time and got an inconclusive result.  What I can tell you is the subcaption scoring limits seriously affect placement and overall scoring.  I only got to look at brass scores before I had kids and lost all my free time, so looking at M&M/Visual/GE never happened. 

Back in '73, Argonne should have gotten a 10%-15% margin for music analysis.  Their book was the hardest thing anyone had ever seen by a mile.  But due to there being a 10 point ceiling and a lack of rules governing difficulty, the difference between them and Vanguard was 1/10th of a point instead of a full point... which absolutely did not represent the difference in complexity and difficulty of those two programs.  The most obvious example of the score gap actually resembling reality is '78 brass ensemble:  Spirit scored a 14.0/15 and Devils were second with a 13.0.  In other words, Spirit's ensemble performance was judged to be 6.67% better than the rest of the top 12!  Going back another point from 2nd put you in 8th place.

If you want to talk about one score affecting another... 1973 again, 27th placed 3rd in brass execution in semis, but 16th in analysis.  Played the hell out of lousy book.  Meanwhile, at Finals, Vanguard placed 1st in analysis and 3rd in brass overall, but was 8th in execution.  Great book, played like crap.  Meanwhile, Blue Stars finished 2nd in brass execution, but 4th overall (behind Vanguard) because they had a 1.1 point differential in analysis.  Stars' line was obviously better than Vanguard's, (Stars Field Brass score was 1st at 13.0, SCV was 9th at 11.9) but the huge gap (9%) in scoring for analysis minimized their actual edge in execution (5.6%).  Field brass and ensemble brass were each 15 points, but were averaged together and added to the 10 points for analysis to get the overall brass score of 25.  The gaps between execution scores (maxed out at 15) were smaller than the gaps on analysis (maxed out at 10).

What does all this accounting and math really mean?  The difference in how well you played was not reflected in the scores to the same proportion as how much better your design was.  A mediocre performance of a great design scored better than a great performance of a mediocre design.

Fast forward to 2022... show design still limits performance scores, just in a much more obvious way.

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5 hours ago, C.Holland said:

just remember, design helps or hinders everything.

you'll never see a 20 in "achievement" of a content labeled 14.   

You're definitely right - and I'm sorry, I'm not meaning to sound like I'm picking on you - but you brought up a good point.  Achievement *should* be able to outpace content if needed.  That's the whole point of the subcaption.  If a great brass line plays a watered down book, they should get high achievement, low content.  I don't get how these are always supposed to tie together.  Grrr.

Same with GE - should be <mostly> separate from performance scores.  As an example, Troopers should probably be blowing the roof off of the competition in GE, even if their performance captions aren't keeping up as hard.  More Grrr.

Mike

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13 minutes ago, MikeN said:

You're definitely right - and I'm sorry, I'm not meaning to sound like I'm picking on you - but you brought up a good point.  Achievement *should* be able to outpace content if needed.  That's the whole point of the subcaption.  If a great brass line plays a watered down book, they should get high achievement, low content.  I don't get how these are always supposed to tie together.  Grrr.

Same with GE - should be <mostly> separate from performance scores.  As an example, Troopers should probably be blowing the roof off of the competition in GE, even if their performance captions aren't keeping up as hard.  More Grrr.

Mike

you're not bothering me.  if you were an *ss then maybe... but youre all good. i appreciate the educated input.

 

they're split scores for a reason. in theory. 

eriously.   As a performer of many seasons, and then a staff member and designer of many seasons, it has always bothered me that the "achievement" is tied to content.   The bull we used to be fed was "as the achievement excels, it reveals more of the content and vice versa".   That statement alone is misleading.  It implies every show is a possible 100.  

I then used to ask "so if that's clean, both scores will jump".  And this question was met with a "uhhhh... yeah, kinda, sure... "

Its almost as good a response to the standard "Did you listen to my tape"...    and mine was "Do you remember what you stated on it?"  

Which was almost always met with a fumbling of the judges notepad and many a "uhhhh, ummm, lemee see here... uhhh uhhhh uhhh ummmmm..."

Edited by C.Holland
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5 hours ago, mfrontz said:

But they're all subjective captions.

Even in the days of ticks, you'd ask, who's counting the ticks? Or, what counts as a tick? 

 

Yes everything is subjective to a degree….but even dummy dumb dumb people can assess 

Who is achieving better intervals

Who is achieving flag line work better

Who’s musical ensemble is more together 

etc…..

I would feel a lot better if GE was much less of a focus 

Edited by Triple Forte
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44 minutes ago, Triple Forte said:

Yes everything is subjective to a degree….but even dummy dumb dumb people can assess 

Who is achieving better intervals

Who is achieving flag line work better

Who’s musical ensemble is more together 

etc…..

I would feel a lot better if GE was much less of a focus 

AS stated for decades over and over from those part of the tic system...it was horrible and just as subjective. Now when a judge views a product what makes you think the things you mention here aren't being done .( just a question not a attack on your opinion ) A product works or it doesn't from a presentation stand point or a design standpoint or both.

One can also agree or disagree with an outcome and thats the nature of competition and those viewing it .

 

Edited by GUARDLING
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8 hours ago, TheOneWhoKnows said:

I've been popping in and out of topics here and reading lots of "Crown's surging!" "Bloo is surging!" "Cadets are surging!" and a lot of talk that "anything can happen at finals". Other than BD winning, which we know is a lock at this point (sorry not sorry), I tend to agree that the rest of the placements... well are up for grabs.

I say this because taking a look back over the season there is one thing that is certain score wise, GE judges aren't on the same page and there appears to be a lot of differing opinions on who is effective and who isn't from judge to judge. Placements are going to truly depend on who is on the panel. And not just on finals, but each night. 

But! A caveat, I wouldn't be surprised if all the sudden this week the GE judges are suddenly in lockstep with one another. 

I would be surprised if there was total agreement across the board. judge the show of the day. None of them are all looking at the exact same thing at the exact same moments. even the averaged MA sheet has had disagreements except when J. Missing appears

Edited by Jeff Ream
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2 hours ago, GUARDLING said:

AS stated for decades over and over from those part of the tic system...it was horrible and just as subjective. Now when a judge views a product what makes you think the things you mention here aren't being done .( just a question not a attack on your opinion ) A product works or it doesn't from a presentation stand point or a design standpoint or both.

One can also agree or disagree with an outcome and thats the nature of competition and those viewing it .

 

I think when an effects judge looks at a corps  they should completely keep their personal likes and dislikes out of the equation.  Are they doing that? I don’t know do you? I can tell you this there was a particular judge who didn’t like the Beatles so right out of the gate the bluecoats were at a disadvantage in 2019. That type of thing should never be the case. 

I mentioned in a separate thread that I thought it would be very interesting to see what the marching members of the corps themselves could come up with for a judging system.  

I am part of a completely unrelated hobby that involves judging which can be viewed as being subjective as well. we look at entries and the entries with the least amount of errors win either a third second or first place plaque. We work in teams of three or five to avoid deadlocks. If someone has bias it is overruled by the other two judges( which thankfully almost never happens ). Would be very interesting if a caption was Judged by three judges and then they come to a consensus amongst the three of them to determine a result.   Unfortunately this would be incredibly expensive I would imagine but it would certainly be interesting.  😁

by the way it’s all good having a spirited debate I enjoy it I hope you do as well 👍😁

 

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7 minutes ago, Triple Forte said:

I think when an effects judge looks at a corps  they should completely keep their personal likes and dislikes out of the equation.  Are they doing that? I don’t know do you? I can tell you this there was a particular judge who didn’t like the Beatles so right out of the gate the bluecoats were at a disadvantage in 2019. That type of thing should never be the case. 

I mentioned in a separate thread that I thought it would be very interesting to see what the marching members of the corps themselves could come up with for a judging system.  

I am part of a completely unrelated hobby that involves judging which can be viewed as being subjective as well. we look at entries and the entries with the least amount of errors win either a third second or first place plaque. We work in teams of three or five to avoid deadlocks. If someone has bias it is overruled by the other two judges( which thankfully almost never happens ). Would be very interesting if a caption was Judged by three judges and then they come to a consensus amongst the three of them to determine a result.   Unfortunately this would be incredibly expensive I would imagine but it would certainly be interesting.  😁

by the way it’s all good having a spirited debate I enjoy it I hope you do as well 👍😁

 

Yes I do👍

I do agree , personal likes or dislikes should not be part of a judges approach to judging, Do I believe for the most part that is exactly what happens.Yes, I know for me when I approach any judging situation in the past I could care less who is on that field or go into viewing anyone with an expectation. Are there questionable people  over the years and their alleged Bias?for sure. When looking at some of this which has been a question probably since  the beginning of any judgeable activity one has to ask is the complaint due to not  liking an outcome or believeing the outcome should be different or actual shady activity. That I'm sure is yet another debate that can be had.

As far as MMs coming up with some kind of judging system. Well I have always been of the belief that marching members need to be just that, members, not teachers, directors judges etc etc, If they want any of those then move on to that BUT remember as far as judging or how a corps is judged and the weight of captions etc etc is decided by the corps and they have the ability to change something if the want.

With all  that said I do believe that if there are serious situations of either bias of shady activity coming out of the judging community OR a judge is not being held accountable for their decisions then the corps collectively need to step forward and investigate the situation and not ignore it. Accountability BITD was for judges was a hot mess with the old yet often used verbage of " I called it like I saw it " and that's where the conversation ended. I think being part of both I personally can say it's better now, as far as that anyway.

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