Tesco 3 for 2

[DeerTick]

Is the ranking list worth all the effort that's needed to maintain it ? What is it actually used for.

I'm afraid I'm reluctantly inclining towards this view.

I've always found it interesting, in a fun way, to compare my score within my age class and within my club. I look forward to the Thursday am update.

It's also generated a good number of threads on this forum.

And, to be fair, I've contacted BOF on a couple of occasions re different names for the same person and two different BOF numbers for one person. Both times they have quickly sorted things out.

AP

[greywolf]

Is the ranking list worth all the effort that's needed to maintain it ?

What effort? IMHO a big part of the problem that BOF aren't willing to put any effort in.
It's all very well saying contact the clubs to get results re-uploaded, but a lot of club websites don't tell you who's responsible for the upload.

I've contacted BOF on a couple of occasions re different names for the same person and two different BOF numbers for one person.

Who did you contact? I've had no such response. There's no obvious single point of contact for the list - if there was and they had appropriate access then a lot of the obvious mistakes could easily be sorted e.g. the JK day 2/3 issue and upload errors like
http://www.britishorienteering.org.uk/i ... &course=3&

[DeerTick]

I've contacted BOF on a couple of occasions re different names for the same person and two different BOF numbers for one person.

Who did you contact? I've had no such response.

Caroline Povey.

AP.

[JK]

LOL - still not fixed.

JK is a generous event.

[EddieH]

And as events that are loaded over 2 weeks after the event are not included in your rankings, does that mean that if it is now taken down the points will remain

[greywolf]

And as events that are loaded over 2 weeks after the event are not included in your rankings, does that mean that if it is now taken down the points will remain

No, they will disappear if/when someone at BOF actually gets round to dealing with it.
However (AFAIK) because points from individual events are not retrospectively recalculated, any impact they have had on ranking points calculations for events which have happened in the meantime will persist. In this instance this is likely to be tiny, but in other cases (especially where coming from wrong BOF numbers) the impact can be significant, especially when the club(s) involved can't or won't re-upload corrected results.

[EddieH]

Whatever will happen, it is absurd that the combined results are still standing

[King Penguin]

I thought points from every event in the last 12 months were being recalculated on a weekly basis as a fudge to "fix" the downward trend.
Perhaps this has stopped; despite some good runs I have got nowhere near my top 6 scores at all this year.

[greywolf]

I thought points from every event in the last 12 months were being recalculated on a weekly basis as a fudge to "fix" the downward trend.
Perhaps this has stopped; despite some good runs I have got nowhere near my top 6 scores at all this year.

I think the scores are being continually rebased (i.e. adjusted to maintain overall mean 1000, SD 200) rather than recalculated. My runs from the S6D are now scoring 10 points more than they were last August.

Overall, however, the value of points seems very consistent - the S6D allowed me to get 6 ranking scores for the first time in a couple of years, I was ranked 285th with best (only) 6 scores totaling 7518 - looking at the rankings now the guys tied at 285 have 7517 points...

[JK]

The rankings are all a bit of good clean fun: nice to compare your progress up and down compared to clubmates (especially those of different ages or who do different courses); decide how great that run really was; and of course generate a bit of local rivalry.

You can also joke with the DEE guys at the top of Short Brown at http://www.britishorienteering.org.uk/i ... &course=3& about what double-super-secret training they had been doing over the holiday period!

I don't know how much effort these rankings take to do, but they are definitely a nice-to-have.

Bonus Q: which club's women are so strong that their representative at WOC is only their 12th highest ranked?

JK

[greywolf]

Bonus Q...

MAROC. But by the same token (less than 6 scores) CLOK's women are stronger, and Interlopers Men even more so

[graeme]

Bonus Q: which club's women are so strong that their representative at WOC is only their 12th highest ranked?
JK

Its a bit pointless comparing people who don't have a full set of scores. It would be worrying if she didn't have the highest average score (but she does, by some margin).

In fact, the highest GB-women average ranking scores (all events, not top-6) are Tessa Hill, Claire Ward, Helen Palmer, Hollie Orr and Catherine Taylor. Notice anything significant there?

[greywolf]

You can also joke with the DEE guys at the top of Short Brown at http://www.britishorienteering.org.uk/i ... &course=3& about what double-super-secret training they had been doing over the holiday period!

They are the beneficiaries of a weakness in the algorithm, which uses the pre-existing average scores of competitors to assess the strength and variability of the field for any course and then allocates points accordingly, and also (I think) of a club not uploading results correctly.

The algorithm usually works more or less OK, but struggles if the actual variability of the field is much less than that suggested by existing scores. This occasionally happens when you have a novice who improves massively from one event to the next (which perhaps explains why such anomalies are more common in urban races - you can imagine a novice orienteer / good runner getting horribly lost in the forest at their first event but then putting in a reasonable performance in town). It also explains why mistaken identity / wrong BOF numbers can have such as impact.

In this instance at the DEE short brown there's a Mr Simpson from MDOC in the middle of the field doing a respectable 1hr29mins for 8.2 km whose only previous score was 542 points (1hr24mins for 3.6km) at an EPOC event a couple of weeks previously.

However, the results for this EPOC event say "56th Paul Simpson +Fray Harker MDOC M40 84:00" which suggest that he wasn't running alone, so should have been marked n/c, and not allocated any ranking points.

He then would have had no previous ranking scores, and would have been omitted from the algorithm's assessment of the field at the DEE event in January - without the distorting effect of his one very poor score the points awarded would have been radically revised - with winner getting somewhere around 1300 points etc.

[greywolf]

Points for JK day 2/3 combined now removed

[DeerTick]

Points for JK day 2/3 combined now removed

Yeah!