General Skating Chat

[Forcefield]

Is this being discussed elsewhere on the planet or maybe I missed it? I'll just like to rant for a moment about how two Chinese judges were singled out by ISU and lo and behold not USA. I just saw another English article about it and so it made me lose it finally. I am furious and thank goodness I wasn't here when Yuzu got underscored on his WR and etc.

 

Really though, if Parker for USA gets on the judging panel at another Hanyu or Boyang competition in the future 

[shanshani]

Yeah, the decision not to investigate Parker is kind of absurd. She graded the USA men about 9 points above their actual scores on average, which in and of itself is a huge red flag, even ignoring her low-balling of Yuzu and Boyang. I actually did some math and got a 0.03% chance that that kind of difference would occur by random chance. Yeah, you read that right. 0.03%--or in other words, 3/10,000, way, wayyyy beyond the threshold of statistical significance.

 

Edit: the first calculation was found by comparing Parker's score deviations for US men to score deviations in general for all judges in the Oly's men FS. Using a more conservative comparison, comparing only Parker scoring US men versus Parker scoring everyone else, I still got only a 0.06%~0.11% chance that her two average are that far apart due to random chance (note that on average, she scored non-US men 0.38 points below the other judges, and she scored US men 9.24 points above other judges--that doesn't even pass the sniff test). Basically however you look at it, Parker is super, super biased.

[EisElle]

@shanshani I just wanted to thank you for all your work & analysis (what you posted *on the other place too*), it's so much work, amazing

 

I hadn't paid much attention to the second of the two Chinese judges punished and I (mistakenly) thought it was another too blatant case like for Men FS... I was so surprised reading the official motivation, the amount of bias didn't looked that much more egregious than what many, many judges show. Still wrong, of course, but not worse than what ISU let slip away in the past.

And tbh, to see how that judge singled out for his bias against S/M stings, as his scores weren't as biased as those of Lorrie Parker in Men FS... It's unavoidable to think that being part of a certain fed determined wheter ISU went for the hammer or a friendly pat on the back

[shanshani]

29 minutes ago, LadyLou said:

@shanshani I just wanted to thank you for all your work & analysis (what you posted *on the other place too*), it's so much work, amazing

 

I hadn't paid much attention to the second of the two Chinese judges punished and I (mistakenly) thought it was another too blatant case like for Men FS... I was so surprised reading the official motivation, the amount of bias didn't looked that much more egregious than what many, many judges show. Still wrong, of course, but not worse than what ISU let slip away in the past.

And tbh, to see how that judge singled out for his bias against S/M stings, as his scores weren't as biased as those of Lorrie Parker in Men FS... It's unavoidable to think that being part of a certain fed determined wheter ISU went for the hammer or a friendly pat on the back

 

Haha, thanks. I'm in the middle of switching jobs atm, so I have a lot of time on my hands. Also, I think part of the reason I like figure skating is because it feeds my love of spreadsheets. It's super cool that I can figure stuff out about the sport with just some math.

Now that I've thought about it more, I think I've got a pretty good method for sniffing out judging bias--way better than what the ISU uses at any rate (seriously, did they consult an actual statistician at any stage of the process of deciding how they were going to look for nationalistic bias? Not even an actual statistician--someone who did well in Stats 101 should be fine). Gonna run some more numbers, but from what I've been able to see by testing the method on Lorrie Parker's scoring history, it's both pretty powerful but also conservative in its assumptions, unlike some of the calculations I was doing earlier. (Though not the 0.11% calculation--that one is fine and employs the most conservative version of the methodology I'm testing. Seriously, I cannot overstate how obvious Lorrie Parker's nationalistic bias is.)

[KatjaThera]

The only logic I could find as to why the Chinese judge was punished but not the US one is if they compared the total score the nation's judge gave to the final score. That way, indeed, the Chinese judge's score was much higher than average, while the US' not as much, because most other judges also scored Nathan highly. However, what they should have looked at is the difference between the scores given to their athletes and those given to other athletes. Nathan getting a score over 20 points higher than Shoma, and some 30 (I forgot the actual numbers) points over Yuzu, who, incidentally, was 5th (after Shoma, Vincent and Javi, I think) for the US judge, is absolutely ridiculous. But they won't look at that, so might as well not waste energy on it...

[Katt]

The Chinese judge in men's event derserved to be punished as it was too obvious and she already did the same thing in 4CC. However, Feng Huang and Lorrie Parker's national bias are about the same. Tbh, Lorrie Parker did even worse than Feng Huang, but yeah, for some reason, she got pass. So at least for the men's event, the message is " learn how to cheat like US judge, not like Chinese". Anyone who defend Lorrie and think its right that Nathan's Lp should be 30 pts higher than Yuzuru's need to check their brain

And yeah, I saw some people's back to their same old "Hanyu won so why you still complain ?" again. Well,  why 2 chinese judges were suspended when S/H didn't win and Boyang didn't get medal in the end ???

 

[shanshani]

I mean, I think the lesson is more like "be American, not Chinese" because Feng Huang cheated less than Lorrie Parker and still got suspended.

[moonkat]

3 hours ago, shanshani said:

I mean, I think the lesson is more like "be American, not Chinese" because Feng Huang cheated less than Lorrie Parker and still got suspended.

Be American or be twice as good  superior in every way

[shanshani]

Still working on my judge bias assessment project. Literally every single judge (Parker, Chen, Kubota, Yamamoto, Delfa, Kozhemiakina) I've checked so far shows evidence of home country bias. The only difference is the extent of the bias (Chen > Parker > Delfa > Kozhemiakina > Yamamoto > Kubota) and how strong the evidence is (Chen > Parker > Kozhemiakina > Yamamoto > Kubota = Delfa).

[WinForPooh]

@shanshani I just want to say thank you for your awesome spreadsheets!  I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that you'll have the time and inclination to crunch some data here and there during the season, too, because I'm sure it would be in equal parts infuriating and fascinating. 

[Eclair]

17 hours ago, shanshani said:

 

Haha, thanks. I'm in the middle of switching jobs atm, so I have a lot of time on my hands. Also, I think part of the reason I like figure skating is because it feeds my love of spreadsheets. It's super cool that I can figure stuff out about the sport with just some math.

Now that I've thought about it more, I think I've got a pretty good method for sniffing out judging bias--way better than what the ISU uses at any rate (seriously, did they consult an actual statistician at any stage of the process of deciding how they were going to look for nationalistic bias? Not even an actual statistician--someone who did well in Stats 101 should be fine). Gonna run some more numbers, but from what I've been able to see by testing the method on Lorrie Parker's scoring history, it's both pretty powerful but also conservative in its assumptions, unlike some of the calculations I was doing earlier. (Though not the 0.11% calculation--that one is fine and employs the most conservative version of the methodology I'm testing. Seriously, I cannot overstate how obvious Lorrie Parker's nationalistic bias is.)

you should apply at ISU for a freelance job for  developing a good method to sniff out national bias  As well as block judging   go you!

[shanshani]

I don't know if the ISU would actually be interested in a serious and systematic investigation of nationalistic bias...

Anyway, in non judge-bias news, in light of Yuzu's apparent fondness for 3A sequences at FaOI, I went ahead and did some calculations comparing his layouts if he replaced his 2T with a 3A sequence. Turns out the 3A sequence layout has higher BV by 2 points. So we might actually see him do 3A sequences in competition? He's better off attaching it to a 3Lz (or maybe 3F, if he wants to keep at least one jump of each type) instead of a 4T though, because +SEQ lowers the BV for the whole combination.

4Lz, 4Lo, 4S, 4T // 4S3T 3A1/2Lo3S 3Lz3A (+spins/steps/choreo) BV = 99.7
4Lz, 4Lo, 4S, 4T // 4S3T 3A1/2Lo3S 3A2T (+spins/steps/choreo) BV = 97.7

If he does this, his BV will actually be only one point short of the following Nathan layout, which I think is Nathan's highest BV realistic layout for the upcoming season (assuming Nathan doesn't get back his 4Lo), a BV gap of essentially nothing:

4Lz3T, 4Lz, 4S, 3A // 4T3T 4F 3Lz1/2Lo3S (+spins/steps/choreo) BV = 100.74
 

[hoodie axel]

3 hours ago, shanshani said:

I don't know if the ISU would actually be interested in a serious and systematic investigation of nationalistic bias...

Sure, but I hope you get your analysis published somewhere. The ISU doesn't have any shame, but it deserves to be shamed anyway. And the skaters might appreciate it.

[¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

6 時間前, Eclairさんが言いました:

you should apply at ISU for a freelance job for  developing a good method to sniff out national bias  As well as block judging   go you!

 

I...don't think ISU would want somebody who's too good at their job. Cos if they did they could easily have had  more than a few in their ranks and they'd be a more well-run organization today. The fact that they don't and remain as shady and stuffy as ever is circumstantial proof that it'd work against certain interests. So working from the outside like this and taking potshots at them is probably the only way to oppose some of the practices that are rampant within it. It's not ideal but this has never been an ideal world to begin with. It could be made better with persistent effort though so go for it, I say. ^^

[yuzuangel]

11 hours ago, shanshani said:

Still working on my judge bias assessment project. Literally every single judge (Parker, Chen, Kubota, Yamamoto, Delfa, Kozhemiakina) I've checked so far shows evidence of home country bias. The only difference is the extent of the bias (Chen > Parker > Delfa > Kozhemiakina > Yamamoto > Kubota) and how strong the evidence is (Chen > Parker > Kozhemiakina > Yamamoto > Kubota = Delfa).

The Japanese judges just do not know how to play this game 

Which I commend them for, tbh, because at least we know when Yuzu wins, he wins fair and square. Winning Worlds/Olys from extremely controversial judging is something skaters will have to carry forever....