Another suggestion for race points

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   I dare say we're all bored with ways of calculating results now, but I
think I've got a slightly different way of doing it which could have
some merit:

There's been a bit of discussion about whether the race points system
should emphasize performance or consistency with actually turning up.
I've an idea of a way we could support both.

If the total points for each competitor are calculated by sorting the
results (i.e. 2000, 2000, 1921, 1842, 1531) and then adding them up
using the full value of the best result, half the second, a quarter of
the third etc. (Whether powers of two are the correct way to do this is
of course open to debate). This is something that a spreadsheet ought
to be able to do automatically, if fed with the same race result points
as are calculated at present.

The effect is such that the top few in each class would remain pretty
much untouched in order as these are usually people who win in those
classes. However, those who win sometimes but don't turn up often come
up in the order and those who are there all the time but don't go so
quickly go down in the order.

The effect is that the most competitive in any particular class rise to
the top of that class. Those who are less competitive sink, but rise to
the top of their own class.

At present, I'm somewhat above Steve Slade in open class, not due to
speed, but purely due to attendance. Re-calculating in this way puts
Steve well above me in that class, which is entirely reasonable. He'd
still be below gNick, for instance, who turns up far more often and is
also much quicker than I am.

Another example: Alan Goodman would retain his position at the top of
sports class, but in open and unfaired, Iain James would leapfrog him.
I think that's probably fair too.

The junior competitors at present mostly have very good
consistency in coming to events and race very well, but aren't
competitive with the fastest on the
track overall. They would tend to sink down the order in the open,
unfaired and
sports results, but retain their positions in the junior class. Hannah,
Holly and Casey are all above Steve Slade in the open results at
present, which doesn't seem quite right.

This also means that a single duff day won't have the dire effect on
the results as it does at present. Due to the way the results are
sorted, so long as a competitor rides on other days as well, they'll
only lose some small proportion of potential points due to the single
duff day. If you attend 8 events in a year, it'd be just 1/128th of the
total that are affected by that one duff day.

This doesn't require that we change the number of individual race points
allocated at present. In fact, I think the current figures would work
quite well with this. It values the combination of a
a fourth, fifth and a sixth about the same as two firsts. So, you still need consistency.

So, there you go. An idea. I don't particularly expect it to be
adopted, and hope for it not to be debated at length at the AGM, but it
is a different way of viewing the results we have now.

David.