Scoring Systems

[Unome]

So I've been scanning the older forums recently, and I see a lot of mentions to different tournament scoring systems. Does anyone have any info as to the differences between these?

[robotman]

What are you looking for in terms of scoring systems?
As in the programs used to score the tournaments, or the different methods used to score?

[Schrodingerscat]

Do you mean different ways of assigning points and ranking teams? If so:

The first difference of which I have heard is that the places are inverted into points, (Eg 1st is 30 points, 30th is 1 points), and the high score wins. I gather that this was once far more common among tournaments, as I mostly see it wtih older score sheets.

The second set of systems of which I am familiar involves dropping certain events from the final points. I have heard of many tournaments before that will drop the worst placing from the final rankings. This helps to smooth out what are often outliers and place a greater emphasis on overall performance. I also suppose states which allow teams to pick a subset of an expanded event list also fit into this category.

[Unome]

What are you looking for in terms of scoring systems?
As in the programs used to score the tournaments, or the different methods used to score?

Probably should have thought of that... I meant the programs that score (although I did learn something new from Schrodingerscat's post )

[John Richardsim]

Alright, I know this isn't what exactly you're looking for (I just saw your most recent post), but I've already typed all of this, so hopefully you'll learn something from this too.

Up until 2001, the National Science Olympiad scored the national tournament as high score wins. Each event was given a maximum number of points, in which the first place team in that event received the maximum points, the second place team received one point less than the first place team, the third place team received one less point than second place, and so on, until a team was awarded only one point, in which that team and every team placing below them in that event was awarded one point (e.g., 1st place=11 pts, 2nd place=10 pts, 3rd place=9pts...10th place=2 pts, 11th place and beyond=1 pt). Early national tournaments had a maximum amount of 11 points per event (the highest team score was usually 100-130 pts), and as the competition grew, ties became frequent (there were even some 5 way ties), so the maximum number of points was increased to 25, and again to 41 (if I remember correctly, and now the highest team scores were 600+). If things with scoring at this point were as hectic as they sound, then they'd have to be pretty crazy.

At the 2001 national tournament, the scoring system was changed to what it is today, where low score wins, and nth place=n points. This system is more comprehensive (therefore decreasing the likelihood of an error) and generally leads to less ties (not to say that they still don't happen for first place, last place, and everywhere in between).

Some state organizations still use the old scoring system of high score wins (such as MA Div B (even though MA Div C is on the new system)), some use modified versions of the new system (MI caps off points at 40th place, so 40th-48th place (excluding NSs and DQs) will receive 40 points), and some state use...different methods (WI uses a system where all official 23 events+5 trials are offered, but a team must choose only 23 to count for their score, taking one event out of each category (once again, if I'm not mistaken)).

[chalker]

I'll take the rare opportunity to engage in a little self promotion and point you to my system that we've used at Nationals for several years now (as well as in many State Tournaments):
http://sourceforge.net/projects/soscoring/

I also have a couple customized versions I've created over the years to deal with some of the atypical scoring schemas mentioned above. I'm always happy to help where I can and to consider new features if you want to suggest them.