Does anybody else keep track of their personal statistics?

[TheMaxWilliams]

I would post this in the middle school section, but it'd be more visible here. My stats are as follows during my two seasons:

Games played: 60 (12 during tournaments)
Games started: 53 (9)
Correct tossups: 195 (55)
Incorrect tossups: 101 (23)
Bonus parts written corretly: 305 (53)
Bonus points: 1,395 (238)
Total points: 3,390 (818)
Game-winning questions answered (tossup or bo
nus): 17 (4)

[theMoMA]

Please keep discussion related to quizbowl in the quizbowl areas. -mgmt

[theMoMA]

Max, I don't think most people keep track of their personal stats in such a detailed way. Many quizbowlers keep notebooks tracking their performances throughout the years. (I did this for about three years during my college career, but I stopped because I found it was difficult for me to pay attention while doing all that writing during the game.) But I'd venture that most who have records of their performances, myself included, didn't go through and compile totals from that.

As you've perhaps already noticed, quizbowl and personal statistics have a sometimes-uneasy relationship. On one hand, people love powering questions, scoring points, seeing themselves high on the leaderboards, and generally looking cool because they're good at the game. (Maybe not everyone does, but I certainly do, and I don't think I'm unique.) On the other hand, people are often dismissive of a discussion of individual stats for several reasons: it's a team game and winning is the paramount concern, playing for personal stats can lead you to play stupidly, no one likes a selfish player, your own stats are interesting to yourself but much more boring to everyone else, etc.

It's also worth noting that an obsession with stats at a particular level can actually hurt your growth as a player; if all you're concerned about is improving your numbers on your local formats, you might spend a lot of time breaking down and analyzing your own performance when you could instead be focusing on improving your game. I read in a local league, and I see lots of high school players seemingly concerned with whether they got 6 or 8 tossups in one particular game, when they should really be focused on long-term improvement instead of short-term variability.

All this is a long way of saying that there's nothing wrong with tracking your performances and hopefully your improvement. It's a great benchmark to see how far you've come and to set goals for the future. But just know that other players probably aren't as focused on each individual point to the extent you are.

[Windows ME]

Bonus parts written corretly: 305 (53)

I like this stat.

53 bonus parts written correctly during tournaments!

[Cheynem]

Welcome to the forums, Max. One thing to keep in mind for future reference is to try to avoid making it seem like you're just bragging about your own performance. I don't know if that was your intent, but it can seem annoying or off putting to other forum users. When I first started posting here (way back in 2003!), I kept posting about my team and how good we were and that didn't work out too well. I'm sure you didn't mean to create that vibe, but putting additional information in your post to make it clear how we're supposed to respond to it would be helpful.

[Monstruos de Bolsillo]

I keep track of my personal stats, and my team's practice stats. I love stats of any kind, so that probably explains it. Oh, and I love baseball, which goes hand in hand with statistics.

[The Ununtiable Twine]

I use an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of records but the sheet doesn't reveal anything about my game except that I'm old. I've had it since 2006 and I update it just for the sake of updating it now. I know Jonathan Thompson has an elaborate record of his personal statistics including most scoresheets, as well as who powered what. Conversations between the two of us often used to include quotes like this: "Mr Sundberg, I recall facing you in a match in 2007. You powered these specific three topics and I powered these five. Shame you botched the pronunciation of Kyoto by saying Tokyo or you would have had another." Ah, the good old days.

[AKKOLADE]

If you only answer three tossups in your college career, this whole deal becomes much easier to handle.

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

I won't say who it was, but I once observed one of the best players in the history of quizbowl keeping track of the tossups that he and his teammates got during a tournament. What he was specifically doing was keeping track of how many of the questions they answered were "dead ducks" (i.e., tossups where the other team had negged) and then excluding those from the stats.

In effect, he was reconstructing the SQBS statistics for the tournament, but only including data from tossups that were contested. This data then fed (presumably) into whatever algorithm was used to determine who was on the A team for that year's nationals.

[Nine-Tenths Ideas]

I won't say who it was, but I once observed one of the best players in the history of quizbowl keeping track of the tossups that he and his teammates got during a tournament. What he was specifically doing was keeping track of how many of the questions they answered were "dead ducks" (i.e., tossups where the other team had negged) and then excluding those from the stats.

In effect, he was reconstructing the SQBS statistics for the tournament, but only including data from tossups that were contested. This data then fed (presumably) into whatever algorithm was used to determine who was on the A team for that year's nationals.

Maryland notably has a player who does this, along with every answerline. It's very useful when people want to go back and remember specifically your dumb neg from four rounds ago.