The Quizbowl Resource Center

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:You switched Dominic's and my staaaaaaats in Round 7; I'll send you an email, Chris, if I find anything else.

ThisIsMyUsername wrote:Will the staaaaaaats from the various side events be posted?

marnold wrote:Columbia's staaaaaaats are wrong. The last 2.5 games Columbia A was just Dan Passner because the rest of us had to catch our bus.

Fixed these posts.

Posting accurate stats is one of the most important duties of tournament hosts. It's not whiny or selfish to want your team's performance accurately represented; in fact, it's the tournament director's responsibility to heed such requests. We spend a lot of time preparing and writing our events. As a player and a writer, I want to see accurate representations of how people did on the questions. The idea that wanting such accuracy is somehow a problem is in line with the "why do you care so much about quizbowl, it's just a game!" arguments.

theMoMA wrote:Posting accurate stats is one of the most important duties of tournament hosts. It's not whiny or selfish to want your team's performance accurately represented; in fact, it's the tournament director's responsibility to heed such requests. We spend a lot of time preparing and writing our events. As a player and a writer, I want to see accurate representations of how people did on the questions. The idea that wanting such accuracy is somehow a problem is in line with the "why do you care so much about quizbowl, it's just a game!" arguments.

Yeah, that's not what I'm doing, but thanks for the thoughts.

theMoMA wrote:Posting accurate stats is one of the most important duties of tournament hosts. It's not whiny or selfish to want your team's performance accurately represented; in fact, it's the tournament director's responsibility to heed such requests. We spend a lot of time preparing and writing our events. As a player and a writer, I want to see accurate representations of how people did on the questions. The idea that wanting such accuracy is somehow a problem is in line with the "why do you care so much about quizbowl, it's just a game!" arguments.

Is it really that relevant whether a tossup was mistakenly attributed to a player different from the one who answered it? Regenerating stats is, right now, somewhat of a pain in the ass. A minor mistake like that is worth noting, but it's just not that important in the grand scheme of things.

grapesmoker wrote:

theMoMA wrote:Posting accurate stats is one of the most important duties of tournament hosts. It's not whiny or selfish to want your team's performance accurately represented; in fact, it's the tournament director's responsibility to heed such requests. We spend a lot of time preparing and writing our events. As a player and a writer, I want to see accurate representations of how people did on the questions. The idea that wanting such accuracy is somehow a problem is in line with the "why do you care so much about quizbowl, it's just a game!" arguments.

Is it really that relevant whether a tossup was mistakenly attributed to a player different from the one who answered it? Regenerating stats is, right now, somewhat of a pain in the ass. A minor mistake like that is worth noting, but it's just not that important in the grand scheme of things.

I think that this is true in the abstract, but the circumstances surrounding the tossup may hold additional weight to the players from the team. For instance, it could have been an early and skillful buzz on a piece of little-known information. I still remember the first question I powered. Obviously, I've no idea if a circumstance like this is the case in this instance, but there can be additional emotional value to the players involved surrounding statistics.

grapesmoker wrote: A minor mistake like that is worth noting, but it's just not that important in the grand scheme of things.

You can't tell me that our 5-point loss to Chicago in 2008 being recorded differently doesn't bug you a little.

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:

grapesmoker wrote: A minor mistake like that is worth noting, but it's just not that important in the grand scheme of things.

You can't tell me that our 5-point loss to Chicago in 2008 being recorded differently doesn't bug you a little.

If it was recorded differently somewhere, as you suggest, I really and truly don't care. Anyone who wants to know about that game can ask someone who was actually there. I believe there are ample summaries of that game available for anyone interested in ancient history (including those preserved on these forums).

I can understand wanting the stats from the main tournament, but from side events?

I think that for the main tournaments, posting stats should be done in a timely manner, barring extreme circumstances. If they're done, then it does not take long to post the stats, if they're not up already. If feasible, I recommend putting the stats up online after every round or so, so this way if something happens, they're already up for the most part.

With the advent of Scobo it takes one minute to update and upload stats. It's the tournament host's job to do stuff like this. People travel hundreds of miles and pay hundreds of dollars to play these tournaments. Hosts should take their responsibilities seriously.

Fred wrote:

ThisIsMyUsername wrote:Will the staaaaaaats from the various side events be posted?

Fixed these posts.

While it's debatable whether it's absolutely necessary to fix every error in stats (I personally do, because I think it's a nice thing to do at relatively little cost to myself), I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for stats from a side event to be posted if they do exist.

That's not why Fred posted that.

Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It wrote:That's not why Fred posted that.

I'm probably missing something, but why did he post that along with the parodies of the posts asking for fixes in stats if he didn't want to say that those three posts were roughly equivalent?

Charbroil wrote:

Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It wrote:That's not why Fred posted that.

I'm probably missing something, but why did he post that along with the parodies of the posts asking for fixes in stats if he didn't want to say that those three posts were roughly equivalent?

BECAUSE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, IT WAS A JOKE.

Thank you.

Charbroil wrote:

Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It wrote:That's not why Fred posted that.

I'm probably missing something, but why did he post that along with the parodies of the posts asking for fixes in stats if he didn't want to say that those three posts were roughly equivalent?

Because Eric asked for Staaaaaaats and then Chris provided Staaaaaaaats but hey, let's lecture me on the importance of stats, which I clearly don't understand when I am responsible for finding staaaaaaats for every single high school quiz bowl tournament and have been responsible for finding them for all of the PACE affiliated tournaments the last two years as well. I clearly do not understand how important staaaaaaats are, but with Andrew and Charles' help, I may be able to see the light soon!

Edit: I will use a new word filter to help teach myself the importance of this information.

Fred wrote:Edit: I will use a new word filter to help teach myself the importance of this information.

And now you have broken the links between this forum and Ottawa's hosted statistics (which have "s t a t s" in the URL). Thanks a lot.

Don't worry dude, I have it on good word that the new version of HTML will support this word filter across the Internet.

Fred wrote:Don't worry dude, I have it on good word that the new version of HTML will support this word filter across the Internet.

I know that the original pages are fine, that's why I said links "between". But since you think I'm an airhead, you can fix these and any other statistics I've posted in the past six years:

viewtopic.php?p=202526#p202526
viewtopic.php?p=197414#p197414
viewtopic.php?p=191362#p191362

bsmith wrote:

Fred wrote:Don't worry dude, I have it on good word that the new version of HTML will support this word filter across the Internet.

I know that the original pages are fine, that's why I said links "between". But since you think I'm an airhead, you can fix these and any other statistics I've posted in the past six years:

viewtopic.php?p=202526#p202526
viewtopic.php?p=197414#p197414
viewtopic.php?p=191362#p191362

I think I fixed it!

Lesson of the day: Never make jokes.

Make jokes all you want, I will just sometimes take them as an opportunity to moralize. And you'll notice that my remarks aren't a direct response to Fred, I'm just tilting at swirling ideas that I imagine exist. That's what I do.

I don't think it's inherently wrong if you take Jerry's approach as a player; in fact, I think my feeling is basically the same. Maybe I'm giving the impression of someone who likes to look over how I've done at various tournaments, but I almost never dig up old scoresheets or online stats. I certainly don't think anyone's opinion of my playing ability or performance at a certain tournament will change if the vagaries of inaccurate stats give or take away a tossup or two from me. But I do think that hosts have a responsibility to the players to keep accurate stats and to fix errors when they surface. The attitude of simply posting and forgetting stats is an extension of the problematic attitude that some schools take, which basically forgets that teams spend time, effort, and money to play these tournaments and deserve better than half-hearted hosts.

In general, I'd like to see host sites do a better job recording stats accurately, entering them accurately, and fixing them when there are mistakes. Scores and stats are a part of the game that we shouldn't have to question and there's really no good reason not to make the best effort to get them right. The idea that some mistakes are too small to fix seems to me to be one of the attitudes that leads to sloppiness in the first place.

As an aside, I see parallels between this discussion and my positions on grammar and packet formatting. I guess on the whole I'm a fan of getting these technical things exactly right even when almost right would probably suffice. The reason I think that's useful is because people actually get these things detrimentally wrong quite a bit, so I'd rather we just try to get them dead on than have endless debates about what's "right enough."

From a TD's perspective, it's easy to start seeing stats as a secondary concern. You have to worry about getting teams, questions, rooms, buzzers, etc. -- things without which there can be no tournament. You're running around all day resolving protests, convincing security not to kick you out of your room, even convincing teams not to leave early sometimes, etc. When people come up to you to talk about stats, it's very easy to think to yourself "wtf are you talking to me about stats for, I'm busy making sure that this tournament actually happens, go die in a fire you propellar-head stats geek"

This is why it's good to have people like Donald Taylor or the (now sadly retired) Brian Young. You can tell those people "hey, do stats", and thereby pretty much prevent any stats problems. MO in Minnesota didn't seem to have any issue posting stats, while MO in Maryland did. Spoiler: one had Donald Taylor, the other didn't.

Train some member of your team in SQBS, nominate him as the dedicated stats person for each of your tournaments, and see these problems go away. These people develop a sense of professional pride in being the stats guy, and that's key/

MO in Minnesota didn't seem to have any issue posting stats, while MO in Maryland did. Spoiler: one had Donald Taylor, the other didn't.

The inestimable Donald Taylor aside, I would like to once again iterate that Maryland did not have "issues" posting stats. They were up less than 24 hours after the conclusion of Sunday's events and had like 3 minor typos that were fixed two days later. What delay there was in posting them was the result of our stats guy actually using my laptop to do stats and me not realizing I had the stats until Monday evening. This rather underwhelming discussion is presumably in response to the more egregious stat-negligence at various events (some of them assuredly hosted by Maryland) over the past few years - I'm not sure why our MO mirror has become the case study.

DumbJaques wrote:

MO in Minnesota didn't seem to have any issue posting stats, while MO in Maryland did. Spoiler: one had Donald Taylor, the other didn't.

The inestimable Donald Taylor aside, I would like to once again iterate that Maryland did not have "issues" posting stats. They were up less than 24 hours after the conclusion of Sunday's events and had like 3 minor typos that were fixed two days later. What delay there was in posting them was the result of our stats guy actually using my laptop to do stats and me not realizing I had the stats until Monday evening. This rather underwhelming discussion is presumably in response to the more egregious stat-negligence at various events (some of them assuredly hosted by Maryland) over the past few years - I'm not sure why our MO mirror has become the case study.

Yeah, my post was meant primarily as a plug for Donald Taylor. Didn't mean to accuse Maryland of any villainy.

As an apology, please accept this image that I found while googling Magyarosaurus, which seems to depict him oppressing some Slovakian dinosaur, possibly Nolanosaurus:

In what I'm sure will be a shock to all of you, I'm going to go ahead and disagree somewhat with my esteemed colleague.

theMoMA wrote:But I do think that hosts have a responsibility to the players to keep accurate stats and to fix errors when they surface. The attitude of simply posting and forgetting stats is an extension of the problematic attitude that some schools take, which basically forgets that teams spend time, effort, and money to play these tournaments and deserve better than half-hearted hosts.

So, I think this is probably the crux of where we part. I certainly do think that hosts have a responsibility to their teams and to the editors, and those responsibilities include a timely posting of accurate statistics. So far, so good. However, for the most part, hosts already do this. They collect stats and they post them and they're about 99% accurate. What we're talking about here is not some egregious failure to carry out basic hosting duties, but multiple people posting things like "I had one more power in this round" or "you switched my stats with someone else's."[1] Is it regrettable when it happens? Surely. But it seems like on your account, every time someone posts this, the stats person now has to go back and change the SQBS file and reupload the results, and if 10 people make different requests at different points in time, it starts being a royal pain in the ass. At some point the marginal utility of additional precision in stats-keeping becomes so low that in my view, it's not even worth it to bring it up.

[1] As a footnote, one thing that's tacitly being assumed in this discussion is that whoever is making the request for the correction has the right stats. I see no reason to assume this.

In general, I'd like to see host sites do a better job recording stats accurately, entering them accurately, and fixing them when there are mistakes. Scores and stats are a part of the game that we shouldn't have to question and there's really no good reason not to make the best effort to get them right. The idea that some mistakes are too small to fix seems to me to be one of the attitudes that leads to sloppiness in the first place.

There's a very good reason not to make the best effort because the best effort by definition would involve ferreting out and correcting every error, no matter how inconsequential. And that's time-consuming, so we settle for the next-best effort, which is to let individual people find the mistakes and then correct them as time allows. In my view, I would be perfectly happy with the next-next-best effort, in which we simply let these things drop. I do think some mistakes are too inconsequential to worry about; in any case, it's not like they result from some wilful malice on the part of the staff, but rather from simple mistake like writing a value in the wrong column. I reject the assertion that not correcting these errors is somehow derelict on behalf of the staffers.

As an aside, I see parallels between this discussion and my positions on grammar and packet formatting. I guess on the whole I'm a fan of getting these technical things exactly right even when almost right would probably suffice. The reason I think that's useful is because people actually get these things detrimentally wrong quite a bit, so I'd rather we just try to get them dead on than have endless debates about what's "right enough."

I see those parallels too, although of course in this as in that debate I am on the opposite side. Almost right is good enough, in my view; we have way more important things to worry about, because the failures that are actually detrimental to tournaments are different in kind and not just an accumulation of these little kinds of things. The people who run good tournaments but make a trivial copying mistake are not the same people who run bad tournaments in which copying mistakes are the least of your worries.

Both Andrew and Jerry have valid points. Yes, hosts have a duty to get stats up in a timely manner. Yes, hosts should strive for the stats to be as accurate as possible. But, given the nature of how stats are entered, it is difficult to ensure 100% accuracy. I strive for 110% accuracy given the scoresheets given to me, as I usually have to fix a math error or two. This is why I am against any idea concerning automatically inputting scoresheets into an SQBS-like program: how will someone be able to tell if scoresheets are in error?

During a tournament, when someone tell me that stats got mixed up, as long as the player is not a complete dick about it, and willing to wait if more pressing issues arise, I don't mind fixing it. I ask for the round number, and I pull out the scoresheet within two seconds. I show the scoresheet to the player, and we try to find the error together. The error is noted, and I fix it on the scoresheet and in the files. I've found at times, that sometimes the error was my fault, and sometimes it was the fault of the scorekeeper. At times, I've actively sought out players on certain teams to fix scoresheet errors, since the numbers just don't add up.

After tournaments, I've regularly had people message me small fixes, which I usually get to. At times, I note it, and it slips my mind, such as the one I got from this year's MO. I strive to be accurate in my entry, but if a scoresheet is in error, then what I enter is in error, and I cannot detect every mis-placed -5, 10, 15, or 20.

In short: if there are issues, don't hesitate to bring them up, but don't be a dick. The circuit needs not another Jason Keller.

Also, I appreciate the plug, Bruce. As people may note, I am not retired from doing stats, nor have I really slowed down.

Also, Bruce made a point I cannot stress enough: have a dedicated statsperson involved in your club. The circuit needs more people like this.