The Tasar v the Icon

changing the parameters their Mike- one minute you were rejecting the bottom 75%, now you're just reject the bottom quartile.   50% slide in two pages... nice going. 

If you discount top and bottom quartiles you do not get to 'boat potential' really .... Imagine a development class if you like.  You reject quite rightly the bottom quartile but generally any boat improvements will be disproportionely be in the front.  So any boat technical advantage is 'missed' for a considerable period of time.  The resulting PN will always reward the newer boat over the older ones..nd not just in class racing ..  because it is cushioned by the 7/8th of the iceberg below the surface  

Just extend the argument now to 'regular' classes.  Older boats are also not usually the fastest, they are not generally the most capable in any class fleet.  The potential of the boat itself to perform at the upper limit is missed by dilution.  For example what is the average age of a club sailed Laser ?  Yes we know the front have new kit every couple of years (do I mean months ?) but the average is a bit longer in the tooth...  (Excuse me using the Laser as an example but bear with me a mo ...  but we all know them and I even had 6 myself over the years and it is just representative here).  So is the 15 year old club Laser, (substitute with your own choice here *) with its aged sails and dodgy cover and foils representative of the potential of the class ?  This has little to do with crew ability as well note.

Mike L.

PS - The object is it not to measure boat performance - not the people.   I am not characterising people as 'crap' btw ... put the back of the fleet guy in a better boat and guess what most go faster.  Put the front of the fleet guy in an old clunker and suddenly many of them don't look quite so capable ....  If you have boat speed more of 'your' decisions do tend to look good .. and vice versa.

Originally posted by blaze720 I thought a couple of cages could do with a proper rattle on a dull morning ! (GRF not withstanding)

Me too - seems to have worked - though GRF was pretty measured.

I agree with both sides on this, sadly, if that is even possible. Yes, boats should be scoring more accurately, and one way to do this is to reject the results where crew skill has obviously distorted the figures. But the majority of people using the system are the ones where crew skill has distorted the figures. Maybe we should only use the middle 50% - where crew skill distorts either up or down, we scrap it.

Edited by chrisg - 13 Oct 14 at 12:16pm

I thought a couple of cages could do with a proper rattle on a dull morning ! (GRF not withstanding)

The real irony is .. just how many individual boat results let up to the blessed first 'EN' becoming the bench mark....  Pray tell us how many sailjuice results do you think have been collected in comparison over the past few seasons ? 

Do you perhaps think it is perhaps a) more b) less c) about the same 

You are surely not also suggesting now surely that SJ results or GL numbers are not to be trusted are you cos they did not come via an RYA  club return ?   If you reject them why not reject the 75% of 'clunker' results  from the backwoods of beyond as well ?  Your seemingly preferred sample, the UK dinghy 'universe' carries a hell of a lot of distorting junk around with it.   In any other field, yes ANY other field even, when trying to get a decent handle on things statistical  you consider the underlying quality and validity of the data -  It is not simply a matter of amassing the most lumberous data set possible and then applying a few techniques ..ever   RIRO as it ever was ...  whatever the crunching process involved.

Aa few more crumbs on the surface .....   

Mike L.