Changes to the Ranking Scheme

The ranking algorithm is being updated on the website today. The changes include a change to the ranking algorithm, additional views of results and the rankings to enable users to drill down into the results/rankings and make the system more interactive.

As part of the update, the new algorithm will be run across the results for events since 1 January 2017 which will mean some ranking scores being changed. Hopefully, a few anomalies and exceptional scores awarded to some competitors will be removed during this process.

The changes to the algorithm are to address these anomalies and exceptional results and to tidy up a few related matters. The changes include:

• Outliers (exceptional results) are included in the initial calculations for the course ranking parameters but then the runners whose score would be more than 100 points different from their previous average are ignored for the second final calculation of ranking points.
• The rule that there must be 10 previously ranked runners on a course before it can be ranked is now unnecessary and has been replaced by the rule that if there are fewer than 8 competitors with non-outlier scores on a course the course will be excluded and ranking points not awarded. It is understood that this will make it hard for competitors to judge whether there will be sufficient people on a course to ensure the course receives ranking points.
• The calculation of the ranking parameters for a course is on the averages of the runners scores and not on all the separate scores.
• The various parameters involved in the calculation are now recalculated on the same basis and included in the second pass of the calculation.
• The algorithm calculations no longer run immediately after a set of event results are uploaded; the calculations are run as a ‘day batch’ early each morning. This overcomes a lot of calculation time that was wasted when multiple sets of results for an event were uploaded on the same day – now only the most recent upload of the results for an event will be used to run the calculation.

The changes to the participant experience include:

• More linking between results, people, scores, etc to allow drilling down into the results and scores.
• The data can be embedded into websites but drill down is visible only to members.
• A basic graph of a member’s points over time is available.
• The Rankings age class view enables drill down.
• The club ranking points page will allow drill down.

As always it is possible that there will be some initial problems but hopefully, any problems will be few and far between.