[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index][Index by Month]
Prize Distribution... a beginning
NOTE: Please ensure that your news-reader is set for non-proportional fonts
for reading this - there are a lot of columns of figures which won't make
much sense otherwise.....
First of all, thanks to Erik for setting up the mailing list for the judges,
and thanks as well to Karen for her comments regarding continuing AGA
support should this end up costing the organization more than the projected
estimate from the Proposal.
Now, onto divying up the "goodies". In a way, the embarassment of riches
which the many companies who joined with us causes problems with how to
fairly and evenly distribute them. The items vary in value from $5.00 -
$500.00. In case any of you have forgotten, the final tally (including
Seachem's latest donation) for the Prizes is $3,118.50 US. This figure is
based upon a combination of the dollar value of each donation (when
explicitly stated, as with a Gift Certificate), information from the
manufacturer regarding the U.S. retail value of the item, and in some cases
the actual selling price of some items from the catalogue of Pet Warehouse.
Early on in the process, I set up an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of both
the companies contacted and the donations received. Erik has a copy (for
reference and archive purposes) of this spreadsheet. It is this list that
I'm working from.
Before we can say "this goes to Category A, that goes to Category B", I
think that we need to agree upon a few things -
1. All of the people who took the effort to enter the Contest are "winners".
If I could, I'd give them all a ribbon and a prize. However, this section of
the event IS a contest, and in any contest there are winners and then there
are WINNERS.
2. The individual values of the donated prizes ranges from a low of around
$5.00 up to a high of $500.00, depending upon how finely we divide things.
Some contributions will HAVE to be divided - I don't see anyone needing 5
copies of the Tropica book, for example.
3. The value of prizes awarded in each instance should reflect, in some way,
the level of competition faced by the winner of the prize. i.e. if Miss
Smith wins a Class with 8 entrants and Miss Jones wins a Class with 62
entrants, it should be obvious that Miss Jones overcame higher odds and
faced more competition than Miss Smith. I feel that the prize awarded to
Miss Jones should probably be of a higher dollar value than the one given to
Miss Smith.
I define "Class" as being either Aquatic Garden, Natural/Biotope, Artificial
or Paludarium. I define "Category" as Large, Medium or Small within each
Class.
4. The values of 1st, 2nd and 3rd place prizes within each Class should vary
and reflect in the same way the ideas expressed in item #3.
5. Note that I don't make ANY distinction (in the potential $$$ value of the
awards) between Categories within a Class - it can be more difficult to
aquascape a small tank than a big one. I also ignore the number of entrants
in individual Categories - the stress in what follows is placed on the
number of entrants in each CLASS, not on the number of entrants in
Categories within Classes.
IF we can agree on these general "principles", I took a close look at things
last night. I didn't try to match actual items with Categories (that can
come later) but I focused on the numbers of entries and how they are
distributed. I then looked at the total value of the donated items to see if
I could work out some correlation between them.
As Erik had posted, our entrants look like this:
> S M L T
> Garden 8 26 28 62
> Natural 3 1 - 4
> Artificial 2 3 - 5
> Paludarium - 6 1 7
78
This could of course vary, as mail-in stragglers might still arrive, but it
is probably safe to say that the ratios will remain pretty much the same.
When I looked at ways of "weighting" the values of the individual awards,
there were two major problems - the first is that 72 gallon bow front
aquarium. It is just TOO valuable for us to award it as one of the "win,
place or show" prizes in ANY particular Category, as we couldn't match its
value for the comparable awards for other similar Categories. To do so would
mean that the other, lesser awards would have to be so small as to appear
"stingy".
So, I removed the value of the bow front tank from the total of the "prize
pool" and suggest that it be awarded to the winner of Best of Show (as
selected by the judges). There is one cavet attached to this suggestion
however - this will ONLY work if the eventual Best of Show winner is a
resident of the continental U.S., as All Glass Aquarium can only guarantee
delivery within the U.S. Should the Best of Show be awarded to someone who
doesn't live int he U.S., we'll have to re-think this (or make some
alternate arrangments).
Once the bow front tank's value is out of the picture, we are left with $
2,618.50 to be distributed. Applying the principles suggested in items #3,
#4 & #5 above, I came up with a list of "relative weights". An hour or so
with my calculator gave me a series of potential values for each of the
individual Categories.
Looking at the listing that resulted from this process pointed out a second
major problem - the values suggested by a straight application of the
"weighting" resulted in some beautiful awards in the highly subscribed Class
(Aquatic Gardens) but left precious little for the other Classes which had
fewer total entries. The awards were WAY too "top heavy".
By taking a proportional amount away from the "win, place and show" awards
in the Aquatic Gardens Class, and distributing it amongst the "win, place
and show" awards in the other 3 Classes, I was eventually able to arrive at
a distribution scheme which hopefully provides for nice prizes for the
Classes which had not received as much attention from entrants as Aquatic
Gardens, while at the same time reflecting the competition level faced by
the winners of the Aquatic Gardens class.
In what follows, I have already adjusted the way the "weighting" is applied
to the various Classes, removing some from the top subscribed Class and
distributing it among the smaller Classes.
Class Place # of Factor Weight $$$
entrants
in Class
Garden Small 1st 62 3 186 $ 300.00
2nd 62 2 124 $ 250.00
3rd 62 1 62 $ 160.00
Garden Medium 1st 62 3 186 $ 300.00
2nd 62 2 124 $ 250.00
3rd 62 1 62 $ 160.00
Garden Large 1st 62 3 186 $ 300.00
2nd 62 2 124 $ 250.00
3rd 62 1 62 $ 160.00
Natural 1st 4 3 12 $ 60.00
2nd 4 2 8 $ 40.00
3rd 4 1 4 $ 25.00
Artificial 1st 5 3 15 $ 80.00
2nd 5 2 10 $ 50.00
3rd 5 1 5 $ 30.00
Paludarium 1st 7 3 21 $ 90.00
2nd 7 2 14 $ 70.00
3rd 7 1 7 $ 35.00
________
Total $2610.00
This compares favourably with the $2,618.50 that we have to divy up. I admit
that there is a fair bit of difference between what the winners in the
Natural, Artificial and Paludarium Classes will receive and what I propose
we award to the winners of the Aquatic Gardens Class, but that is based
mainly on the number of people who entered those Classes and the resulting
level of competition the winners faced.
I firmly feel that it would be grossly unfair to make the value of ALL 1st
place awards, the value of ALL 2nd place awards and the value of ALL 3rd
place awards the same simply because the winners in the Aquatic Gardens
Class faces so much more competition to get where they will be.
What do you think???? Again, if you have entered the event as a Competitior,
please say so.....
James Purchase
Toronto
------------------
To unsubscribe from this list, e-mail majordomo@thekrib.com
with "unsubscribe aga-contest" in the body of the message.
To subscribe to the digest version, add "subscribe aga-contest-digest"
in the same message.
Old messages are available at http://lists.thekrib.com/aga-contest
When asked, log in as username is "aga-contest", and password "lookie-loo".