Eric H. wrote: "Never say that NAQT is not a company that can be flexible, wants to do right, and can rectify an error. David's identification of a factor we had in fact overlooked in evaluating D2 statistics from the Northeast sectional led us to the inescapable conclusion that both Dartmouth and Rutgers, who were exceedingly close to receiving initial invitations, probably should have done so rather than being relegated to first and second positions on the D2 waitlist." This is a good remedy. However, the fact that this whole situation arose comes from the fact that NAQT uses statistical measures to allocate ICT bids rather than placing in the SCT tournament or even simply won-lost record. While I sympathise with the difficulties of ranking teams that play in different sectional tournaments, against different opponents and sometimes on different questions; it simply makes no sense to me to use some arbitrary statistical measure for teams from within the SAME tournament. Some teams may have better bonus conversion, some teams may (for whatever reason) score lots of points against a certain type of opponent, some teams may not run up the score against weak opponents. All of these sorts of things may make one team look weaker in an amalgam of points per tossup heard/bonus conversion. But if, within a tournament where two teams face the same opponents and one team comes out with more wins, that team should have the higher ranking, regardless of point totals. Any measure that says a team that went (say) 5-7 is "better" than a team that went 7-5 is simply wrong. The problem is not that the won/lost record is inaccurate in gauging team strength, but that the statistical gauge is inaccurate. Hope you are all enjoying CBI Regionals. Penn State had to cancel our high school tournament today because of weather, so I find myself with unexpected (but appreciated) leisure time. Rob
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