- Joined
- Jun 21, 2003
There is a certain tension in the scoring system on this point.E.g., if there are five or more skaters in the field that judges agree deserve scores "in the mid-7s" right now different judges might give different mixes of 7.25, 7.5, and 7.75 for the three components -- if they feel strongly that one of those skaters is stronger than the others in that group, in general or on one specific component, they can tilt toward the 7.75 scores. But it's more likely that more than one of them will end up with exactly 7.5 as their single component, as opposed to seeing ranges from 7.3 to 7.8 across those skaters.
In which case, the PCS will not make any difference in close calls among those skaters.
One the one hand, suppose a judge thinks that two skaters are really, really close, but if she just had to declare a winner she slightly prefers slater A tp skater B. That judge would be best served by having many components and as fine a scaling as possible. If there were 5 components to judge she could give skater B 7.5,7.5, 7.5. 7.5 and 7.5, and give skater A 7.5.7.5, 7.5 7.5 and 7.75. That perfectly reflects the judge's valuation of the performances. Skater B gets an average of 7,50 and skater A gets an average of 7.55.
But the spirit of the IJS says no, no. no. Skater A is scored against a list of objective criteria, It has notheing to do with what skater B did or didn't do. That would be 6.0, whch we got rid of in 2003 and good riddance.