Re: [AGA Contest] various replies, incl judging...

[Roger Miller <roger@spinn.net>]

I agree with Eric's description of how the harmonic mean works.

On Sunday 23 May 2004 10:52, Eric wrote:

> I guess the fundamental question is: If you are faced with a category in
> which each judge awarded a different tank first place, but no two judges
> agreed, but there was a third or fourth place tank which all judges
> thought was good but not as "striking" as their respective first place
> choice, which tank would you think should get the ribbon?  If you think
> it's one of the first-placers, then we should go with harmonic means.  If
> you think it should be the "common ground", then we should stick with what
> we have.

That's a good and realistic example.  I don't think that an entry that *no* 
judge believed was best in the category should end up with a first-place win. 
 I don't understand what point there is to getting judges with individual 
tastes and known abilities, then using a scoring method that cancels out 
their differences to arrive at a uniformly bland result.   An entry deamed by 
all judges to be competent but mundane should never win over an entry that is 
inspired but controversial.

In some ideal world the judges would be able to pool their opinions and 
arrive at a mutually agreeable ranking.  I don't know of any way to make that 
happen.


Roger



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