Keeping individual stats

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Keeping individual stats

Post by Down and out in Quintana Roo »

Individual stats were not kept? Nor was PPB?
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Re: Norcross mirrors the Prison Bowl -3/6/10- (GA)

Post by Andrew's a Freshman »

You are correct.
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Re: Norcross mirrors the Prison Bowl -3/6/10- (GA)

Post by Down and out in Quintana Roo »

Huh. May i ask why, especially with so many high caliber teams on such a good set of questions?
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Re: Norcross mirrors the Prison Bowl -3/6/10- (GA)

Post by Andrew's a Freshman »

Individual scoring was out of the question. I've been to one tournament this year where individual scores were kept. From a player's perspective I think it's just obnoxious. Teams that attended, for the most part, would just look at us funny if we said we would be keeping individual scores.

I had the intention of measuring PPB. However, I neglected to tell that to the representative who was in charge of scoring. Individual scoresheets didn't make it through the day. I apologize for that lapse in organization.
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Re: Norcross mirrors the Prison Bowl -3/6/10- (GA)

Post by AlphaQuizBowler »

Andrew's a Freshman wrote:Individual scoring was out of the question. I've been to one tournament this year where individual scores were kept. From a player's perspective I think it's just obnoxious. Teams that attended, for the most part, would just look at us funny if we said we would be keeping individual scores.
Can I ask what this means? People can believe whatever they want about teamwork in quizbowl, but nobody can deny the fact that individuals are the ones that answer tossups. I find it hard to believe that keeping track of and reporting a measurable characteristic of the game is "obnoxious." And it's not like reporting individual stats is going to make people feel better; players on any given team know how the scoring is balanced anyway, and so do any opponents they face in the tournament. I would have enjoyed seeing individual stats at the tournament, mostly because it would have ensured that more important statistics (like PPB) were kept as well. Out of the teams in attendance, I'm pretty sure that Alpharetta, Chattahoochee, Centennial, Central Gwinnett, Walton, and Southside would have liked to have seen more comprehensive stats, and I seriously doubt anyone would have complained about it.

EDIT: Perhaps most importantly, individual stats let people know who was on the team at that event. For example, I would really like to know who was playing for Brookwood and Dorman at the Jag Bowl on March 20, but right now the stats are pretty meaningless.
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Re: Norcross mirrors the Prison Bowl -3/6/10- (GA)

Post by Andrew's a Freshman »

That meant that keeping individual scores would have been an additional burden on our inexperienced moderators. They are out of place in the southeast. And, I see little value in them.

Not to speak for anyone else, but I know that Brookwood had (what I believe to be) their top 6 players at Cedar Shoals. Five played at a time, obviously. Dorman A was (from what I remember from previous tournaments) their B team, though there may have been a player missing.
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Re: Norcross mirrors the Prison Bowl -3/6/10- (GA)

Post by centralhs »

I definitely like to see individual stats kept for informational purposes. However, I have mixed feelings about trophies or other awards being given to highest individual scorers. While it does seem to motivate some players, I have been disappointed on occasion to see my students get irritated when other members of their team ring in because it "steals away" some of their individual points.

As for who was on the various teams at the Cedar Shoals Jag Bowl on Saturday... Of the 6 teams that made the top playoff bracket, I believe that only Norcross and Brookwood had a full roster of their 5 best, regular A team players. (As Andrew mentioned above, Dorman "A" was the usual Dorman B team and Dorman "B" appeared to be the usual Dorman C team.) My own team consisted of only 3 players, as our regular team captain evidently overslept and didn't make the trip to Athens with us.
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Re: Norcross mirrors the Prison Bowl -3/6/10- (GA)

Post by Ethnic history of the Vilnius region »

Andrew's a Freshman wrote:That meant that keeping individual scores would have been an additional burden on our inexperienced moderators. They are out of place in the southeast. And, I see little value in them.
I wouldn't speak for the entire Southeast on this issue. Plenty of tournaments in the Southeast keep individual stats. I can see how a tournament might not keep them for logistical reasons (though it really isn't that hard), but they've always been appreciated, if not expected, at tournaments I've been involved in. Personally, I find them useful for tracking individual progress. And I think they're "fun."
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Re: Norcross mirrors the Prison Bowl -3/6/10- (GA)

Post by CSQuizJags »

True some tournaments in the South do individuals stats, some don't. We, and a few others around here, choose not to- those who tend to fall into the former tend to be colleges, and that's perfectly fine. For some, like ourselves and Norcross, it's a manpower/logistical/time issue. For others, they don't like it period. If a player wants to know so bad their individual stats, it's simple: make a tick mark for every power, 10 and neg you got and do the math. The Coach can do it for the whole team if they want *(I believe I've seen Elliot Rountree using a netbook to keep individual stats this way. That or he was checking his bracket, I'm not sure). :)

And Mr. Horton, while you may not have found our stats to your liking, calling them "meaningless" in my eyes is just a bit insulting. My student assistant and I didn't spend six hours all day in front of SQBS to create "meaningless" stats. People upon viewing them did find some value from them. Jedem das Seine I guess.

Addendum: If a coach has multiple teams, yes, this would be a bit hard to pull off. Hopefully they can bring in adults or have a student keep track during the match for them.
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Re: Norcross mirrors the Prison Bowl -3/6/10- (GA)

Post by centralhs »

It is, of course, always up to the people running tournaments to decide whether or not they want to keep individual stats. However, I really don't like any generalization of what is "appropriate for the Southeast" or what people "like in Georgia" or whatever. Many teams in Georgia aren't used to the keeping of individual stats, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they wouldn't like them.

I will say that when we held our Harvard Fall Tournament mirror back in December, we did keep individual stats and players seemed interested in checking the stat sheet to compare their stats to those of players on other teams. Several coaches even e-mailed me in the days following the tournament requesting that I send individual stats to them because their players were curious.
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Re: Norcross mirrors the Prison Bowl -3/6/10- (GA)

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

What's the logistics argument exactly? I've used SQBS a total of twice, so I'm probably pretty slow, and the individual stats part of the scoresheet takes me about ten seconds. I guess if you're running thirty minute rounds and you have 360 teams, you're out of luck.
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Re: Norcross mirrors the Prison Bowl -3/6/10- (GA)

Post by New York Undercover »

I believe the logistics argument that it is difficult for moderators to track individual stats and moderate and keep rounds running quickly, as well as the manpower issue that there aren't enough people to have two to a room.
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Re: Norcross mirrors the Prison Bowl -3/6/10- (GA)

Post by jonpin »

Even if we are to grant that you didn't want to do individual statistics for whatever reason (and many would not grant that), it's completely unacceptable not to at least keep track of tossup and bonus statistics, even if it just amounts to creating a fictitious single player on each team and assigning that player all of the team's tossup performance. In that way, you provide useful information on the difficulty of the tossups and the bonuses, and comparative data on the teams present relative to other sites playing this set.

As it stands now, you haven't posted statistics. You've posted scores. That's all.
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Re: Norcross mirrors the Prison Bowl -3/6/10- (GA)

Post by jrbarry »

At Brookwood, we have never kept individual stats. It seems like just another task that is not necessary.

As for me, I keep individual stats on our players as they play. I may notice other teams players (as part of any future strategy for teams that are State contenders in GA) but I do not keep stats on them.

Philosophically, I am not a devotee of the "great player" school of quiz bowl. I prefer things that promote great teams and recognize great teams and give stats on great teams to individual stats. This is not an attack on thre keeping of individual stats, just my own personal preference.
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Re: Norcross mirrors the Prison Bowl -3/6/10- (GA)

Post by AKKOLADE »

I don't buy into the "individual statistics promote selfish play" thing, to be honest. If your players understand that it doesn't matter one iota what their individual numbers are if they're going 0-8, then the coach or a teammate or someone needs to make that clear to them. If a basketball player decides to go freelance and just shooting the ball every time they can, then the coach needs to take the player aside and tell him/her that they better play properly or else. I don't see why quiz bowl should be any different, particularly when we should be dealing with smarter players who should understand what it takes to win a game.

blah blah sports analogy whatever, I don't care, it fits.
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Re: Norcross mirrors the Prison Bowl -3/6/10- (GA)

Post by Down and out in Quintana Roo »

jrbarry wrote:I prefer things that promote great teams and recognize great teams and give stats on great teams to individual stats. This is not an attack on thre keeping of individual stats, just my own personal preference.
Then why aren't you upset that this tournament didn't keep track of PPB? That's the most important team stat (other than wins) that there is!
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Re: Norcross mirrors the Prison Bowl -3/6/10- (GA)

Post by Joshua Rutsky »

Crazy Andy Watkins wrote:What's the logistics argument exactly? I've used SQBS a total of twice, so I'm probably pretty slow, and the individual stats part of the scoresheet takes me about ten seconds. I guess if you're running thirty minute rounds and you have 360 teams, you're out of luck.

As a regular SQBS user, I think part of the logistics issue depends on the format of the tournament. If, for example, you're running a 20 tossup/20 bonus set with powers and negs, it's pretty quick to enter stats. If you are running anything with bouncebacks or quarter systems with differing point values, however, it slows down significantly. I don't know about the format of the tourney in question, but in Alabama, when we play on a four quarter packet, I've got to enter score, bouncebacks heard, bouncebacks answered, total points on bonus, total bounceback bonus, and the lightning round as well as individual scoring in periods 1,2, and 4. With our tourney usually having about 40 teams in play, that means 20 worksheets per 30-40 minutes to keep up with the results in real time and post accurate game stats during the event, and that assumes I don't have to go back and search through one or two of the sheets because of a scoring error, which is almost inevitable. Stretch that over a 10 round tourney and you can make for a VERY long, stressful day. I know that there have been events where I have started entering stats at 8:30 AM and continued virtually non-stop through 3PM, not stopping even to eat a piece of pizza for lunch.

On the other hand, if you have a single-page scoresheet and good scorekeepers, I think you can use even the simplest spreadsheet and have decent stats. And if you don't worry about individual awards at tourney's end, you aren't under the same time pressure, and there's really no reason not to include individual stats in your final tourney report except that you don't want to. After all, you have to mark who scored the points on a scoresheet no matter what, right? It takes perhaps 30 seconds to write down player names on the sheet, and any reasonable scorekeeper should be able to make a tick mark under the correct name when a player scores. Even if they occasionally mess that up, you'd still have better information than if no individual stats were kept, and at very little inconvenience to the TD, IMHO as a regular practitioner.
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Re: Keeping individual stats

Post by Nine-Tenths Ideas »

My coach often rails against keeping individual stats as a waste of time with no point, and I can't quite convince him there is one. What exactly do I say?
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Re: Keeping individual stats

Post by Down and out in Quintana Roo »

Isaacbh wrote:My coach often rails against keeping individual stats as a waste of time with no point, and I can't quite convince him there is one. What exactly do I say?
It's very important to be able to keep track of players, from a coach's standpoint. I need to know how certain players do who may be on the bubble... either because i want to push them harder and put them on a higher team, or because i want to push them harder and threaten them with a demotion. It's also very important to see the power:neg ratio so i can see how aggressive a player is being during a match. I've never minded negs a lot (this is why i'm such a big fan of Isaac!) but those aggressive early buzzes should also come with more powers too. Individual stats can show that easily. Since i almost always am moderating at tournaments, and i bring up to 5 teams to some competitions, obviously i can't watch all my kids as once... so i need something that can show those stats later.

From a player's standpoint, i don't know how anyone could convince me that tracking individual stats does not motivate a player. Whether it's one who says "man i got 60ppg! i wonder if i can do 70?" or if it's one who says "i see i only got 15ppg, i know i can do way better than that and challenge my teammates into improving as well." This is a competition after all, and teammates can compete, in a healthy way, against one another to push each other harder and improve. I can tell you that even though you may think of our A Team as a one-man squad with Trey over 70 points in most games, that doesn't make the other three any less competitive and wanting to best each other. If this is done in a reasonable way (and if they realize that any vulching questions will basically lead to one of them being strangled by me), it can improve the team greatly. Plus, this is A GAME, and we play it both to show knowledge and also because it's incredibly fun... individual stats give kids something to show other people what they can do.
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Re: Keeping individual stats

Post by Andrew's a Freshman »

I didn't intend to say "in the southeast, we don't do individual statistics". That was meant to be a logical extension of the fact that I've been to 10 tournaments this year and 1 has kept individual statistics. I apologize if I misspoke (wrote).

My team has one player that answers 70% of tossups, another that answers 20% of tossups, and another two who split the last 10%. It's hard enough getting players to come to tournaments. I wouldn't want their personal statistics being displayed on the internet. (This didn't influence my decision earlier. I just decided to contribute to the discussion.)
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Re: Keeping individual stats

Post by Monk »

Individual stats are pretty common practice in Illinois, and I've never heard anything about them being "obnoxious" or leading to bad play. Coaches and players understand that that someone playing with three solid teammates is going to have fewer ppg than someone with three seat-fillers. If anything, keeping individual stats means that when you think a player is a one-man team because they powered three toss-ups in a row, you can go back, look at the scores, and realize that they would have not have gotten close to winning without their teammate's help.
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Re: Norcross mirrors the Prison Bowl -3/6/10- (GA)

Post by Duncan Idaho »

Joshua Rutsky wrote:As a regular SQBS user, I think part of the logistics issue depends on the format of the tournament. If, for example, you're running a 20 tossup/20 bonus set with powers and negs, it's pretty quick to enter stats. If you are running anything with bouncebacks or quarter systems with differing point values, however, it slows down significantly. I don't know about the format of the tourney in question, but in Alabama, when we play on a four quarter packet, I've got to enter score, bouncebacks heard, bouncebacks answered, total points on bonus, total bounceback bonus, and the lightning round as well as individual scoring in periods 1,2, and 4. With our tourney usually having about 40 teams in play, that means 20 worksheets per 30-40 minutes to keep up with the results in real time and post accurate game stats during the event, and that assumes I don't have to go back and search through one or two of the sheets because of a scoring error, which is almost inevitable. Stretch that over a 10 round tourney and you can make for a VERY long, stressful day. I know that there have been events where I have started entering stats at 8:30 AM and continued virtually non-stop through 3PM, not stopping even to eat a piece of pizza for lunch.
This tournament did use bouncebacks, which might explain the absence of data on bonus conversion. Unless tournaments keep track of bouncebacks separately from other bonuses, this can be difficult, although since PACE does it, if I'm not mistaken, it can't be impossible.

Andrew's stated reasons for not keeping track of individual stats are understandable to some degree. Many of the moderators did seem inexperienced, although there were two staff members in every room in which we played. On the other hand, other steps could have been taken to make this tournament take less time, such as having four preliminary divisions of six instead of three divisions of eight.
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Re: Norcross mirrors the Prison Bowl -3/6/10- (GA)

Post by dtaylor4 »

Ben Cole wrote:
Joshua Rutsky wrote:As a regular SQBS user, I think part of the logistics issue depends on the format of the tournament. If, for example, you're running a 20 tossup/20 bonus set with powers and negs, it's pretty quick to enter stats. If you are running anything with bouncebacks or quarter systems with differing point values, however, it slows down significantly. I don't know about the format of the tourney in question, but in Alabama, when we play on a four quarter packet, I've got to enter score, bouncebacks heard, bouncebacks answered, total points on bonus, total bounceback bonus, and the lightning round as well as individual scoring in periods 1,2, and 4. With our tourney usually having about 40 teams in play, that means 20 worksheets per 30-40 minutes to keep up with the results in real time and post accurate game stats during the event, and that assumes I don't have to go back and search through one or two of the sheets because of a scoring error, which is almost inevitable. Stretch that over a 10 round tourney and you can make for a VERY long, stressful day. I know that there have been events where I have started entering stats at 8:30 AM and continued virtually non-stop through 3PM, not stopping even to eat a piece of pizza for lunch.
This tournament did use bouncebacks, which might explain the absence of data on bonus conversion. Unless tournaments keep track of bouncebacks separately from other bonuses, this can be difficult, although since PACE does it, if I'm not mistaken, it can't be impossible.

Andrew's stated reasons for not keeping track of individual stats are understandable to some degree. Many of the moderators did seem inexperienced, although there were two staff members in every room in which we played. On the other hand, other steps could have been taken to make this tournament take less time, such as having four preliminary divisions of six instead of three divisions of eight.
All you have to do is track bounceback points and controlled bonus points separately. On the other hand, this is apparently too hard for many scorekeepers.
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Re: Norcross mirrors the Prison Bowl -3/6/10- (GA)

Post by Down and out in Quintana Roo »

Ben Cole wrote:although there were two staff members in every room in which we played.
Wait, what? So you had scorekeepers in every room that weren't moderating and they still couldn't do the math for individual scores? All they had to do was add 10s and 15s and subtract 5s for the whole team?

If there is a moderator JUST reading and another person JUST scorekeeping, there is just really no reason why individual scores shouldn't be done.

Also,
Andrew's a Freshman wrote:My team has one player that answers 70% of tossups, another that answers 20% of tossups, and another two who split the last 10%. It's hard enough getting players to come to tournaments. I wouldn't want their personal statistics being displayed on the internet.
Really? So you're saying that you think that, around the country, it's a darn shame that individual scores are kept because they make teammates who are less good than better players feel bad? Do you then think that those running HSNCT and NSC are doing things wrong by posting their individual stats for participating teams all over those interwebs (gasp, for the last 10 years! what will their future employers say when they find that they only scored 12ppg in 2004 HSNCT, or for my brother who only got 19.3ppg at 2003 ICT??)?
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Re: Keeping individual stats

Post by kayli »

If you have two moderators (one reading and the other keeping score), then keeping track of individual scores is really a matter of having a nice organized sheet. Two or three people sitting a room uploading scores from each round makes for a task that isn't so bad (you usually have a lunch break to work with too). There are a couple reasons when keeping individual scores is nont logistically possible though:
1. The tournament size is too large (HSNCT and NSC can accomplish this because they have a tremendous amount of experienced manpower but most tournaments don't).
2. There are not enough moderators to have 2 in each room and 2-3 in the scoring room.
3. Multiple substitutions are allowed to take place during a match (I think Illinois does this. Correct me if I'm wrong though).
4. Four quarter format is used (this is just REALLY unwieldy to work with... but it's possible I suppose).

Individual statistics are useful for a couple thing. For one, it allows students to see how they perform and compare to other players. This can be a cause of motivation for a lot of students. Most kids have at least some ego so, more likely than not, if they don't perform well, they will just be more motivated to study. Also, it's useful for coaches who are staffing to see how their students compare against each other. This would be useful for determining the make-up of future teams. Also, it's really fun to have individual awards for a tournament. It's a good ego boost, and it gives kids something to strive for (and brag about).

Overall, individual statistics are non-essential. However, they're still very important. It's like going to hotel without cable. Sure, you didn't come for the TV. But it gives you something to look at, and most people just expect it to be there. Rightfully so too. Most hosts would have it.
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Re: Keeping individual stats

Post by jonah »

Yeah, IHSA rules allow for nine (that's right, nine) substitution opportunities per game: one thirty- and one sixty-second time out per team per half (2 time outs per team per half * 2 teams * 2 halves = 8) plus halftime.

It's worth noting that these rules were written for games of 30/30, but most tournaments that do less (usually 20/20, sometimes 16/16) don't bother to specify a reduction in the number of allowed timeouts, which means that the above still holds. I don't even know what the rules are for time outs if a game is tied after 30...or want to.
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Re: Keeping individual stats

Post by dtaylor4 »

Arsonists Get All the Girls wrote:If you have two moderators (one reading and the other keeping score), then keeping track of individual scores is really a matter of having a nice organized sheet. Two or three people sitting a room uploading scores from each round makes for a task that isn't so bad (you usually have a lunch break to work with too). There are a couple reasons when keeping individual scores is nont logistically possible though:
1. The tournament size is too large (HSNCT and NSC can accomplish this because they have a tremendous amount of experienced manpower but most tournaments don't).
2. There are not enough moderators to have 2 in each room and 2-3 in the scoring room.
3. Multiple substitutions are allowed to take place during a match (I think Illinois does this. Correct me if I'm wrong though).
4. Four quarter format is used (this is just REALLY unwieldy to work with... but it's possible I suppose).

Individual statistics are useful for a couple thing. For one, it allows students to see how they perform and compare to other players. This can be a cause of motivation for a lot of students. Most kids have at least some ego so, more likely than not, if they don't perform well, they will just be more motivated to study. Also, it's useful for coaches who are staffing to see how their students compare against each other. This would be useful for determining the make-up of future teams. Also, it's really fun to have individual awards for a tournament. It's a good ego boost, and it gives kids something to strive for (and brag about).

Overall, individual statistics are non-essential. However, they're still very important. It's like going to hotel without cable. Sure, you didn't come for the TV. But it gives you something to look at, and most people just expect it to be there. Rightfully so too. Most hosts would have it.
FYI, four-quarter stuff (worksheets included) are supported by SQBS.

As long as a clean, easy-to-read scoresheet is used, and it is filled out accurately, 1-2 people can enter the data, depending on the size of the tournament. The largest tournaments I've done are 48 (without bouncebacks) and 24 (with individual bouncebacks). Luckily, I had mostly clean scoresheets.

The key is to make sure the people filling out scoresheets know what they are doing. I cannot stress this enough. I've had to suffer through this not once, but twice.
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Re: Keeping individual stats

Post by Captain Sinico »

This whole debate is silly. In addition to the nonsense that's already been exploded (e.g. "it's too logistically difficult to keep stats" when it's easy to find and use scorekeepers who can easily keep individual stats and speed up the game and "individual stats have no place in my region" when numerous southeastern tournaments per year keep individual stats) I feel compelled to add that if a coach's players are so undisciplined that even the potential existence of individual stats spoils their play, it's incumbent on that coach to do a better job.

In summary, look, if you don't want to keep individual stats for whatever reason, that's fine. Just say that, apologize to all the people who wanted you to, and move on. Don't put up a bunch of ham-handed nonsense.

MaS
Mike Sorice
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Re: Keeping individual stats

Post by Andrew's a Freshman »

Captain Sinico wrote:This whole debate is silly. In addition to the nonsense that's already been exploded (e.g. "it's too logistically difficult to keep stats" when it's easy to find and use scorekeepers who can easily keep individual stats and speed up the game and "individual stats have no place in my region" when numerous southeastern tournaments per year keep individual stats) I feel compelled to add that if a coach's players are so undisciplined that even the potential existence of individual stats spoils their play, it's incumbent on that coach to do a better job.

In summary, look, if you don't want to keep individual stats for whatever reason, that's fine. Just say that, apologize to all the people who wanted you to, and move on. Don't put up a bunch of ham-handed nonsense.

MaS
I hadn't planned on going back in time and revamping how we kept scores. I don't know if you actually wanted my approval, but if you want to lock this thread then feel free.
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Re: Keeping individual stats

Post by Down and out in Quintana Roo »

Gee, thanks for responding to everything else too.
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Re: Keeping individual stats

Post by Captain Sinico »

What are you even talking about? I didn't say "revamp how you're doing things." I said "you're not compelled by necessity or any meaningful more to do things the way you are now," which is what you said you were. I have no idea what you think I might want you to approve.

MaS
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Re: Keeping individual stats

Post by Unicolored Jay »

I don't see how filling out scoresheets would be so hard. At our tournament, we had inexperienced players who kept score and stuff, and there weren't very many mistakes from what I could tell.
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Re: Keeping individual stats

Post by Andrew's a Freshman »

Carangoides ciliarius wrote:Gee, thanks for responding to everything else too.
What did you have in mind? Your post seemed pretty straightforward. To answer your questions:

Yes. To some extent. No, national tournaments do not need to cater to teams that do not preform very well on a regular basis.

If you wanted me to respond to everything else: I've been enlightened some based on some of suggestions that have been made. I thank everyone who took the time to explain how things could be done more easily and efficiently.
Captain Sinico wrote:What are you even talking about? I didn't say "revamp how you're doing things." I said "you're not compelled by necessity or any meaningful more to do things the way you are now," which is what you said you were. I have no idea what you think I might want you to approve.

MaS
I'm sorry if I was unclear. I thought you were looking to lock the thread since you saw this discussion as unnecessary.
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Re: Keeping individual stats

Post by Captain Sinico »

I see. No, if I wanted to lock the thread, I would.

MaS
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Re: Keeping individual stats

Post by jrbarry »

Andrew:

You guys did good job of running your tournament. No NEED to second guess yourself about keeping stats or apologize for doing what most of us tournament givers in GA do and have done for awhile. Starting a new tournament in an area with lots of established tournaments, it can be a wise move to mimmick what most of the teams who'll be participating are used to. When you establish yourselves on the tournament hosting scene, you can, more easily, use your tournament to advance any idea you might have in terms of different rules, formats, procedures, etc.
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Re: Keeping individual stats

Post by Rountree »

I almost always keep individual scores for my players, round by round, at tournaments. However, I don't go to a tournament expecting individual stats to be kept. And, I am not disappointed if they aren't. Probably the major reason for my approach is that I keep stats quite differently than the computer programs do. While I may tweak my scoring system a little bit depending on the format we are playing, the basics are always the same. Another reason is that team statistics are much more important to me than individual ones for the simple reason that 90% of the time we play teams, not individuals. Players can have good and bad games, but team stats give me a more rounded look at how my team might fare against another team.

Also, I have never seen a program be able to keep track of an individual's contributions to each bonus part. In theory, I realize this is not possible, but in practice I wish it were. Like many of you, I have seen on several occasions a player on a team provide the correct answer to 2-3 bonus parts in a game where they never got a tossup correct. This player's "individual" stats would look rather unimpressive to someone who didn't watch game, yet to his/her teammates, that player could have been the difference in a 10 point win vs. a 10 point loss. I realize that bonuses are "team" exercises, but anyone who has done this long enough has been in a game (or seen one), where a bonus part comes out and all 4 kids sit there looking at each other discussing the answer and then at the last second one of them pulls the correct one (out of the air) and the team get the points. Did the "team" come to the correct answer? Maybe, maybe not. All I know is that one person out of four actually said the right answer, but he/she has no way of earning "individual" credit for it. Not that this makes any difference in the grand scheme of things since this is a team game. However, as a coach, I certainly make a note of these things in my own score-keeping records.
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Re: Keeping individual stats

Post by jdeliverer »

RountreeCHS wrote:Players can have good and bad games, but team stats give me a more rounded look at how my team might fare against another team.
This is only true if, as was said before, you know who was playing on a certain team at a certain time. Individual statistics help you judge how a team fares with different compositions and lets you take a team's results with a grain of salt if a key player is missing.
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Re: Keeping individual stats

Post by Down and out in Quintana Roo »

jdeliverer wrote:
RountreeCHS wrote:Players can have good and bad games, but team stats give me a more rounded look at how my team might fare against another team.
This is only true if, as was said before, you know who was playing on a certain team at a certain time. Individual statistics help you judge how a team fares with different compositions and lets you take a team's results with a grain of salt if a key player is missing.
Right.

Nonetheless, one of the other criticisms of this tournament is that they (i guess this should be in the original thread) didn't even keep track of PPB, the single most important team stat there is. That is a stat that should essentially be expected to be kept, regardless of your opinions on individuality and "players' feelings" about their own stats.
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Captain Sinico
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Re: Keeping individual stats

Post by Captain Sinico »

You know, I don't think anyone's saying or has ever said that individual stats are the end-all be-all in gauging the effectiveness of a player. Maybe we can stop beating that dead horse that didn't belong to anyone to begin with.
If the upshot of all that bluster is an implicit claim that teams are better off without individual stats, I disagree, so let's talk about that.

MaS

EDIT: Typo!
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Re: Keeping individual stats

Post by Whiter Hydra »

If you don't want individual stats but they are posted anyway, you can ignore them.
If you do want individual stats but the aren't posted, then you're out of luck.
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Re: Keeping individual stats

Post by nobthehobbit »

The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio wrote:If you don't want individual stats but they are posted anyway, you can ignore them.
If you do want individual stats but the aren't posted, then you're out of luck.
Yes. Doing comprehensive stats (PPB, individual, etc) is a courtesy to those players/coaches who want such things. Those who don't can ignore them.
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Re: Keeping individual stats

Post by Avram »

As for the concern with details on young players' performance going online, I opted to use first names only (and sometimes last initials) when running high school events back at Grinnell. It was enough to be informative for participants and coaches, and it prevented the results from becoming part of players' Google Permanent Record.
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Re: Keeping individual stats

Post by AlphaQuizBowler »

jrbarry wrote:Andrew:

You guys did good job of running your tournament. No NEED to second guess yourself about keeping stats or apologize for doing what most of us tournament givers in GA do and have done for awhile.
This tournament cut the prelim rounds by one. This had numerous effects, one being a potential change in who made the playoffs. Teams got one less round than they were promised, and it eliminated the tournament from even possibly being a PACE Gold Qualifier, which could have saved Norcross (and Alpharetta) money in discounts for NSC. No tournament can be great if its solution to running behind is to cut a whole round.

The problem with the stats is that Andrew told me before the tournament that we'd get at least points per bonus. And I don't understand why the scoresheets weren't kept. My school still has the scoresheets from our middle school tournament last year. Some people in Georgia have a national view toward the activity and would like to know where they stand before attending national tournaments, and points per bonus (among other stats) would have helped me evaluate my team's readiness and better tailor our preparation.
And Mr. Horton, while you may not have found our stats to your liking, calling them "meaningless" in my eyes is just a bit insulting. My student assistant and I didn't spend six hours all day in front of SQBS to create "meaningless" stats. People upon viewing them did find some value from them. Jedem das Seine I guess.
I didn't mean to insult, but I don't know what value I can draw from them if I don't know who was actually on each team. I was thinking "Wow, Brookwood beat Dorman?" until I realized that Dorman A was at a different tournament. Also, PPB would give them a lot more meaning in allowing comparison with the other teams that played the set.
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