pete.owens wrote:It is not an issue - you measure speed in units of "courses per minute". The absolute measure of speed doesn't matter (just as the ranking calculations would give the same results if time was measured in seconds or fortnights) it is your performance relative to other runners.
So, you're using straight line distance then. Ok, that's fine, but that distance isn't always perfect either.
The rankings are calculated only against people running the same course.
In which case you'd still get the issue that everyone is complaining about - if you "run up," you'll get more points than if you run "your course" (I've made comments about this previously - more people should be running up than do in general).
What the discussion above seems to suggest is that people want a scheme that says if I got 1000 points on the Green course, I did "better" than the person who got 950 on the Black.
Such a system is impossible. (well maybe not, but probably extremely difficult).
Your suggestion might account for the distribution on a course, but won't take account between courses.
You could also solve the issue by not assuming Gaussian distributions. I do wonder if it's the best model here. I'd make the tails longer personally, but I don't know what's the best choice.