Handicap racing now pointless?

Originally posted by JimC Even more complicated than that! Our Laser fleet, compared to our RS200s and Solos, has a greater deviation, but also much more skew in the deviation curve. Effectively that means that very best Lasers (and some of ours are top ten in masters worlds standard) are less far ahead of the average sailor than the best Solos and 200s, but also that the those of "still learning" group who have the greatest potential for improvement are rather further behind the average than in the other classes. If (and that's a very big IF) that picture is true of Lasers nationally, it means if you set a handicap for the best 25% it will be fair for them, generous for the middle 25% and harsh on the lowest 25%. If you set a handicap for the middle 25% it will be harsh on the top 25% and very harsh on the lowest 25%. If you set a handicap for the lowest 25% then it would be generous for the leading 25% and *very* generous for the middle 25%.

Probably showing my poor understanding of statistics here, but I can't quite make sense of this.

I thought if the very best are just ahead of the average that suggests lower deviation, not higher. This then fits with your suggestion that if you set the PY for the best, then you are being generous with the average. And the average is really what PY is about in my books, cause the best will be class racing.

Originally posted by andy101 so setting the handicap for the top of the fleet (if it does have the effect) is not really a bad thing imo

Well, this is the sort of thing one can argue about endlessly, and there are no right answers.

My personal opinion, which is no more likely to be "right" then anyone elses, is for club sailing we should handicap for the majority. For a big event like the Sailjuice series I can see why they would want to handicap for the potential winners, but my concern is that statistically that's a hard target, especially for classes where there isn't that much data. My limited statistical ability isn't up to it, but most I'm sure they are better at the analysis than I am.

Originally posted by rb_stretch I thought if the very best are just ahead of the average that suggests lower deviation, not higher.

Normally, if you'll excuse a statistics pun, yes.
In this case the distribution is highly skewed, and the best don't finish that far ahead of the mass, but the "still room for improvements" finish a long way behind the mass.

Originally posted by Neptune My confusion was what happened to the other 25%, as those numbers add up to 75%.

They don't need to in this case: I'm just using top 25%, middle 25% etc to define, well, really, points on the graph. I should have said quarters really I guess.


Edited by JimC - 14 Jan 12 at 12:07pm