Another negative topic!

[graeme]

Might be worth adding that often someone running down will have some reason to do so: minor injury, cold, hangover, pregnant (well, maybe not an M21) etc. And if they ran "worse than normal", then as Andy says, this will benefit everyone else. Even if "worse than normal" is enough to win.

This genuinely is a systematic problem with the common ranking lists - anyone expecting to run badly will tend to run down rather than up. The effect would be to inflate points on shorter courses, as we have seen. To what extent this, rather than startup error, is the cause of inflation not clear to me.

Interesting to note hermaphroditic ianandmonica can't perform when it matters

[SYO Member]

Greywolf, thank you for clarifying the misconceptions that we still have regarding the ranking system and please continue to do this even if you do use the rolling-eyes symbol in your replies!

Many of us are genuinely interested in how it all hangs together - the Results and Rankings thread is still the biggest ever on Nopesport - and easy to understand explanations in English are great. We may be Stattos but we're not necessarily statisticians.

I had been wondering whether I dare ask the question "If I continue to always get my average points, is this only dependent on who else is running my course, or does it just mean I'm getting neither better nor worse", but your response and Clive's investigation have given me the answer!