propagators

[DaRoc]

if you play a tourney and shoot a 52 with no 1000 rated propagators you get a low rating but if yah play the same tourney in the same conditions with more 1000 rated propagators and shoot the same score your rating will be higher. this does not nake sense to me and a few of my freinds. we are really starting to think that ratings are overrated and certain areas of the country have overrated players. does anyone else feel this way. Plus with disc technology advances why does wind play a factor in your rating?

 

[booter]

a propagator is a fr pearly champ

 

[DaRoc]

a propagator is a fr pearly champ

or someone who loves their Gators alone at night...

 

[Cgkdisc]

if you play a tourney and shoot a 52 with no 1000 rated propagators you get a low rating but if yah play the same tourney in the same conditions with more 1000 rated propagators and shoot the same score your rating will be higher. this does not nake sense to me and a few of my freinds. we are really starting to think that ratings are overrated and certain areas of the country have overrated players. does anyone else feel this way.

This is not true overall. About half the time, higher rated props will produce slightly better ratings and half the time it's the other way around.

Plus with disc technology advances why does wind play a factor in your rating?

It's obvious in the players scores which produce the ratings.

 

[Discwrangler2]

if you play a tourney and shoot a 52 with no 1000 rated propagators you get a low rating but if yah play the same tourney in the same conditions with more 1000 rated propagators and shoot the same score your rating will be higher. this does not nake sense to me and a few of my freinds. we are really starting to think that ratings are overrated and certain areas of the country have overrated players. does anyone else feel this way.

This is not true overall. About half the time, higher rated props will produce slightly better ratings and half the time it's the other way around.

Plus with disc technology advances why does wind play a factor in your rating?

It's obvious in the players scores which produce the ratings.

So it is true on a case by case basis, as we all suspect?

Which leads me to agree with the TS that depending on where you play, your rating can be inflated/deflated. However, I'd agree with Chuck. In the overall picture, we might be talking 5 pts? 1/2 stroke per round on average?

This is the reason the global tournament and other ratings based events (UShDGC) are sketchy at best.

 

[Cgkdisc]

Yes, the SSA will vary because the scores of people are used to produce the SSA. However, no one really knows what the "real" SSA for each round really is because there's no alternative way to produce one. So, as far as we know, any given SSA produced may be "exact." The fact the number is slightly different from one round to another, even when conditions appear identical, may in fact truly indicate slight differences in the course challenge from one round to another.

Here's an interesting fact. Half the SSAs produced in the morning versus afternoon by the same group of propagators on the same layout in the same conditions are higher and half lower. One would think that every player might play better in the afternoon due to learning the course and correcting mistakes from the morning. If that were true, then SSAs in the afternoon would regularly come out consistently lower than the morning. The fact that this doesn't happen is an added validity to the ratings process. It indicates that players are basically creatures with set statistical variances in their scores on average and the way SSAs are produced by using propagator scores is an appropriate way to do course and player ratings.

Regarding the global event, whatever small variances occur in each round, the same pool of props will be playing three rounds on the same course which ramps up the statistical validity of the event to an even higher level overall. In fact, one cut-thru or bounce back putt on fluky baskets affects a player's rating (and payout) more than the slight variation produced with using prop scores for ratings.

 

[masterbeato]

since their is a lot of confusion about the ratings, why not just use each players performance stats to determine their position in rank?

 

[JR]

Chuck how about tiring AKA second round blues? Isn't it also possible that SSA for any given round may be a little off by varying amounts and varying directions?

 

[Cgkdisc]

There are several reasons why players might play better or worse in the second or later rounds on the same layout. The point is that none of those reasons, in either direction, appears strong enough to consistently influence the SSA in one direction or the other which on average is no higher nor lower in rounds after the first round.

 

[DaRoc]

So basically if you live in an area of a low amount of 1000 rated players that most tourneys will not have 1000 rated rounds. i understand it is what it is right now in disc golf and ratings are overrated.

Chuck do you really think that a 15mph wind really effects pros scores in a tourney? i dont. why do we use wind as a variable to determine ratings? Is the PDGA looking at updating the rating system to adapt to tthe disc technology of today?

 

[Cgkdisc]

I don't have to think whether wind affects scores, and thus ratings. It does. Understand that we don't directly do anything in the calculations to account for the wind. It happens automatically based on the higher scores of the players who produce the ratings.

 

[Cgkdisc]

So basically if you live in an area of a low amount of 1000 rated players that most tourneys will not have 1000 rated rounds. i understand it is what it is right now in disc golf and ratings are overrated.

Not correct. Who shows up to play your event has NO bearing on the ratings. It's your score that matters. If you don't have any 1000 rated players you don't see many 1000 rated rounds because they aren't 1000 rated players who shoot many 1000 rated rounds, not because there's a problem with the calculations.

 

[DaRoc]

thanks chuck for the reply. i am not trying to an arss but rying to figure out how and what makes a rating what it si. can you explain to me in a non-technical disc golf terms description on what a propagator is for please and does a TD have to submit the course conditions in with the tourney results?

 

[Moseley]

I don't get this critique/confusion at all, could you guys at least be bothered to read up on how the ratings actually work and what they are supposed to measure?

1. "He/I seems better/worse than his/my rating". Well, if you're talking about player's allround performance in all situations, that might be true - but rating only measures competition performance, doesn't it? It's not a measure of your total disc skills, or something... As a rating of competetition performance it seems to me we have a pretty good system in place. I know a lot of players that have a rating well below their capacity, but then they always perform worse in tornaments... Others behave the other way around, very few people perform as well in tournaments as in other situations.

2. You all have to realize that ratings will probably never FEEL correct, 'cause our feelings are geared towards pattern recognition and ratings are based on statistical averages. A classic example of this is how Apple had to "un-randomize" the random play function in Ipods: Real randomization led to people complaining about perceived patterns, like several songs from an artist in row... Now, we can all understand intellectually that this happens randomly, but our brains are geared to notice these patterns and they feel annoying.
Most of the suspicion of geographical or other unfairness in the system seems to stem from this type of psychological phenomenon, and most "confusion" I hear about as well (you might well be referring to something else, Dan, but I don't get wich stats you're referring to - if it's competition stats that's basically what we've got???).
And JR: "Isn't it also possible that SSA for any given round may be a little off by varying amounts and varying directions?" Of course there will be some deviations, but as long as it's not a regular and significant error so what? Do you have ANY indication (except anecdotal) that the ratings system fails because of this? If so, I'm sure Chuck would love to see it so that the system might be improved.

Disclaimer; I'm not a PDGA member yet (will join this year) but I have studied the ratings from the tournaments I played in pretty thorougly, as well as Chuck's previous explanations of the system here and elsewhere. A lot of the critique against the PDGA seems reasonable to me, but distrusting the ratings... not so much.

 

[Cgkdisc]

can you explain to me in a non-technical disc golf terms description on what a propagator is for please and does a TD have to submit the course conditions in with the tourney results?

A propagator is a player whose rating is based on at least 8 rounds and is above 799. Ratings are produced based on the ratings and scores of all propagators playing a course layout. Propagators are presumed to have more accurate and stable ratings than players whose ratings are based on fewer rounds. The typical propagator will shoot 2/3 of their rounds within +/- 3 throws of their rating with just 1 in 3 rounds either more than 3 throws above or below their current rating. We require at least 5 props to calculate ratings. What a specific props will shoot in a round is essentially random within the parameters indicated above. As you have more and more props, typically 40-50 in a PDGA event, the SSA calculation gets more and more precise but will still slightly vary from round to round.

TDs don't have to submit the weather conditions. It automatically is incorporated in the scores of the props who might shoot 1, 2, 3 or more shots worse than normal on average as the wind increases.

 

[Discwrangler2]

LOL @ wind not being a factor! It might not be, but usually it is in someway affecting play/scores.

Again, ratings overall, are very accurate. Ratings on a round by round basis can vary. For every round I thought I was gipped a 10 pts, there is a round that was a little higher than it should have been.

 

[inthedrift]

LOL @ wind not being a factor! It might not be, but usually it is in someway affecting play/scores.

Again, ratings overall, are very accurate. Ratings on a round by round basis can vary. For every round I thought I was gipped a 10 pts, there is a round that was a little higher than it should have been.

Truth be told. There are several rounds I felt should have been rated higher in my 2010 tourney performance but there are also some that I feel I got some extra love on.

 

[JR]

snipped
And JR: "Isn't it also possible that SSA for any given round may be a little off by varying amounts and varying directions?" Of course there will be some deviations, but as long as it's not a regular and significant error so what? Do you have ANY indication (except anecdotal) that the ratings system fails because of this? If so, I'm sure Chuck would love to see it so that the system might be improved. snipped

I'm interested in knowing if there has been a study where a player playing a familiar course say 100+ rounds on it playing it often enough for a significant data set in calm weather with the same atmospheric conditions being a morning person shooting better in the first round than the other. I'm sure it happens to some persons. There was talk of people usually playing better in the second round. When many people suffer from fatigue. I'm not interested in rating system i'm interested in causes that influence scores and would like to know if the statement of people usually playing better on round two is always true. I usually do play better on second rounds but at times i'm hot on the first round and get exhausted and don't shoot so well on the second round. I don't play rested that often so i'm not a good candidate for studying. That's one reason why i'm asking.

 

[Cgkdisc]

The only study is the one that shows on average there's no difference in SSA on the same layout in a later round than the first. No data on a specific person has been done. One would expect there are some who consistently do better and some who consistently do worse and most where it's apparently random whether they do better or worse on a given day with no pattern visible.

 

[JR]

There's probably lots of anecdotal evidence from many players because everyone evolves and many change routines for preparing for tournys. There are so many potential factors explaining better performance in the morning vs evening and vice versa depending on the test subject that it would be helpful for new and developing players to recognize different types of players. If they identify themselves as belonging to morning or evening persons and what have you they may find quicker what works for them based on the experiences of those more experienced in the same category of players.

I saw a BBC documentary that had a tip for waking up faster for everyone but evening persons could potentially benefit more from it. Bright light systems used for half an hour during morning activities reduces the amount of hormones making you tired 40 % faster than without using the bright light system. I don't recommend floodlighting yourself so use a purpose built system please. I wouldn't know if it works like it did for the test subject because i'm a morning person and good at waking up so i haven't tested the results on myself. Probably won't either. Tricks like this may equal performance. Or rather a functioning warm up routine, eating at proper times the proper amounts of proper foods, maintaining performance during the break between rounds etc. This is OT though. Preparing routines should be collected and analyzed IMO. And then distributed for everyone to learn from.