A few thoughts for those interested in the current debate about the relative merits of win-loss records and points scored in determining who is the "better" team. In my experience, I have observed that one tactic many teams use to improve is to become extremely good in several key areas of the canon at the expense of other areas. For example, a team that is almost unbeatable on lit, history, and fine arts is likely to win most of their games. However, a side effect of this is that their overall points per game will sometimes not be as high as a team which is decent at all areas, since the latter type of team will clean up against bad competition, whereas the former type of team will probably lose out on certain tossups even to mediocre teams. This is why it is not uncommon to see a team win a tournament while averaging less points per game than the second place team. Hence, I think it is dangerous to utilize a system for awarding bids to ICTs which allows teams to leapfrog other teams from the same tournament who had better win-loss records. What things really come down to is that no one has completely figured out all of the factors (both tangible and intangible) that result in one team doing better than another at a given tournament or series of tournaments, and until someone does, won-loss record has to be of primary importance in ranking teams. Kelly McKenzie
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:43 AM EST EST