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Join us for the best data project ever! Dear the computer scientists, the data scientists and the FS lovers amongst us, Since we've been discussing about new scoring system and its effects... I'm totally won over (and shocked to the core) by Ambesi's argument here https://the-a-factor-fs.tumblr.com/post/165975610600/kiss-cry-episode-1#Part_4 The ISU needs to base their decisions on facts and numbers. Ambesi has been calling for a data revolution, but seems like the ISU hasn't taken notes. According to him, the new system won't change anything, and he presented some very good points. 1- Judges correlate TES with PCS: high TES automatically equals high PCS. So changing TES will not change the problem 2- Why not change base multiplier for PCS 3- Personal inflation for some skaters; Biases from federation The last point I find most ridiculous. It is ridiculous how experts like him (and many experts amongst us) frequently make comments like "How many US judges are there on the panel? Then we would know if Hanyu get 10 in PCS"; or "Those American girls get high scores because of their nationalities"; or "some skaters automatically get 9s in PCS and that just doesn't make sense'. We, lovers of this sport, have put up with such blantant score manipulations for too long! We should give constructive feedback. The good news is, all the scoring data, the videos, the rule book etc are available publically. So I call for a data analysis project to present the ISU with numbers, facts. Some of us have already done interesting anlaysis (eg: @yuzuangel ). Let's pool resources to do the most ambitious and timely project ever: recommend the best scoring system for the ISU. Specifically, we want to use data to answer the following questions Q1: is TES a clear predictor for PCS? This is dead easy to do. Q2: what predicts an individual skater's score? factors: competition, judge's federations, etc etc (need some discussions, since we need to take out the "true" score obtained by mechnically applying the rules from the rule book.) One way to get this gold standard would be to average many independent experts' scores (to be discussed further on how to gather such data). One can also do something similar to @yuzuangel's analysis on her blog: eg: compare skater's score x judge's federation Q3: more simulations like the one Ambesi mentioned in the article (more discussion later). A report that answers Q1 and Q2 is already huge. And it will make a huge impact, since it will strike a chord with many observers, reporters, fans and skaters. I do know that this is an ambitious projects - but there are many of us! Plus, as far as I can tell, NO ONE is doing analiysis data analysis whatsoever. So anything that we present, as long as it is objective and a good analysis, is already interesting. Specifics on this project: we will need people to do the following: Phase 1: * data collector / data manager: ideally in this mix we have some fan with FS knowledge, some with CS skills(to scrap data from ISU and related competitions, for example). Detailed technical data, skater data, judges etc would be best * statisticians: I'm one, more needed Phase 2: * report writer: format, edits etc * PR team: disperse results to influential reports, broadcasters and major sites Right now we need people in phase 1. If you're in, please reply below (say briefly what skills you have and what role you want). Then we can organize a private board on this matter. I hope this project will take off!