Figure Skating Team Event

[Denn]

The figure skating world has an interesting scoring system. It has its flaws, but it works well in many ways.

What is a completely idiotic system, though, is how they figure out the team rankings.

Here's what the Figure Skating Team Event rankings would be so far (after the shorts) just by totaling scores. I posted this on Reddit, and more people liked a comment based on a misconception than my original post. People think that the higher men's scores are a problem. They're not, because they're ALL higher. What's a problem is the spread of the scores, and it's only a minor discrepancy among the 4 disciplines.



Of course, we gymnerds know more about this stuff because add scores across 4 or 6 events for AA and Team and discuss the issue from time to time. But I guess skating fans don't know that math.

 

[makam]

The interesting thing is that there is no benefit to winning your section by 5, 10, etc points, winning by .01 nets you the same points as destroying the field. And once you make the finals, just showing up nets you 6 points. You could just skate around waving at the crowd never doing a single skill and still come away with a decent haul of points for your team. (I mean, I realize no one would do that unless you had an injury to protect and knew you would be in last anyway)

I guess it is cool that it can be so close and not having a great ladies skater or pair or whatever doesn't totally eliminate you from the competition, but it would be interesting if the earned score had a multiplier on the points earned or something like that.

 

[Denn]

Yes, exactly!!!